The toy management house

Mills is a complex home, full of ideas, with a floor designed as a giant toy box and a rear facade which filters and softens the strong sunlight, conceived by Austin Maynard Architects for a new mum.

The client, a senior executive and now a new mum, asked Austin Maynard Architects a light-filled home that could hide the mess.

The answer is a floor that was a giant toy-box.

Mills is an extension to a one level weatherboard terrace in Melbourne. The original facade and front two rooms of the terrace remain. One of those rooms has been altered to incorporate a study and a bathroom. A large lightwell separates the original structure from the new extension. The extension has two bedrooms and a bathroom above an open kitchen, living, dining space.

At Mills the architects have made gravity the parents’ ally rather than the child’s by enabling the floor to swallow all the mess. Rather than picking toys up to put back in the toy box, they’ve made the floor one big toy box. Let’s get a broom and sweep all the lego in from the top and sides. It becomes a game for the child as well as a new hiding place to play.

The kitchen occupies the original corridor space. Therefore the substantial space the kitchen would have occupied in a typical location has been used as living space. Upstairs the master bedroom wall can slide entirely away so that the room can increase almost two metres in length when open to the corridor.

Perforated metal has been used to create a stair that feels light like lace and to control sunlight: the white perforated metal facade reflects most of the unwanted sunlight in summer, allowing a soft filtered light to penetrate the house. The lines between inside and outside have been blurred. The glass walls of the living space are offset from the perf facade which creates a comfortable outdoor space that feels as though it is within the skin of the house. The facade feels solid and protective on a bright, hot day. On a dull day, at dusk and in the evening the facade appears far less solid and the metal skin feels more like lace than a wall.