House in a Garden by Edition Office creates immersive dwelling within Birrarung landscape
House in a Garden by Edition Office in Melbourne is a residential architecture project positioned above the Birrarung floodplain, conceived as a dwelling embedded within dense foliage. Designed for a family with two school-aged children, the house prioritizes an immersive relationship with its landscape, where spatial experience is shaped by time, temperature, sound, and seasonal change rather than outward views.
The Edition Office project is organized as a simple yet carefully articulated plan composed of two distinct wings. One is open, fluid, and oriented toward shared living, while the other is enclosed and quieter, supporting rest and retreat. These zones are defined by smoothly cornered timber walls that guide movement through the interior, allowing spaces to expand, contract, and bend around existing tree canopies. The result is a sequence of interconnected living areas interspersed with more intimate rooms, maintaining continuity while preserving moments of privacy.
Elevated above the floodplain, the structure rests on a series of large supporting elements that shape the ground condition below. These structural “feet” create pockets within the landscape, forming shaded areas of undergrowth and allowing taller trees to pass through voids that extend to the level above. This approach reinforces the continuity between architecture and site, where built form adapts to vegetation rather than displacing it.
The Edition Office house is defined by timber surfaces and a restrained palette that supports its relationship with the surrounding environment. A slender timber batten screen mediates the boundary between inside and outside, filtering light and limiting direct views while maintaining a constant visual connection to foliage. This condition produces a shifting perception of the house: from certain angles it appears solid and enclosed, while from others it becomes translucent and permeable.
The Edition Office design foregrounds the phenomenological qualities of space, focusing on how the body experiences enclosure, light, and proximity to nature. Interior volumes are layered with plants, niches, and objects that soften the geometry, creating spaces that are open yet contained. Seasonal variation becomes a primary driver of atmosphere, with colour, light, and shadow continuously altering the interior environment.
House in a Garden replaces a 1980s Mediterranean Revival dwelling that previously dominated the site, re-establishing a more balanced relationship between architecture and the former market garden landscape. Developed in collaboration with Eckersley Garden Architecture and constructed by Comb Construction and Canterbury Landscapes, the project integrates sustainable systems including solar panels, heat pump hydronic heating and cooling, and cross-ventilation strategies. These systems support environmental performance while reinforcing the project’s central ambition: to create a home that is experienced as part of a living landscape.
Image Credits: Maxime Delvaux
Edition Office: https://edition-office.com
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