Architects EAT transform Kazoo house with geometric connections

Transformed: The original 1920s brick house near Caulfield Racecourse has a new courtyard with a fireplace and a steel staircase leads to a viewing platform of the racetrack. Photo: Architects EAT

Some of the brick houses built along the perimeter roads around Caulfield Racecourse in the 1920s have towers or second level balconies that give vantage of the track. The red brick "Kazoo", named after a champion racehorse, didn't. But now, up a white spiral staircase, it does.

More than a few of these houses also had backyard stable blocks because they were owned by trainers. Kazoo, set on a corner, had a small stable. But now it doesn't.

After a refurbishment and rear addition created by Architects EAT, the stable's bluestone cobbles have been redeployed as a footpath and part of the space the stable occupied has become an open courtyard now partially bordered by a long, high brick wall that wasonce the side wall of the house.

Master suite: A new upper level provides a parental retreat. Photo: Architects EAT

In adding a double-level rear addition, and against the initial wishes of the local council, architect Albert Mo kept the wall complete with its window openings as the ready-made boundary. "It works as protection for privacy and as part of the urban fabric", he says. The new wing migrated across to the south side of site.

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With these and other strategic moves, Mo has made a sanctuary-style home of very interesting geometries, very unexpected features, and with open contemporary amenity combined with graciouslyrestored period rooms with Baltic pine floors, 3.6-metre high corniced ceilings and a wide, arched hallway.

The modern kitchen/master bedroom wing steps dramatically down a flight of concrete stairs that descends a metre to the courtyard level. At this old/new threshold, "the place where everything collides and changes", says Mo, a wide flight of carpeted stairs take off up to the first floor bedroom.

Geometry in motion: The upper level is screened from the sun by powdercoated mesh. Photo: Architects EAT

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Architects EAT transform Kazoo house with geometric connections