The owners had lived on the site, around five kilometres from central Melbourne, since 2005. Over time, apartment buildings rose around them, narrowing views, reducing daylight and eroding privacy. Rather than leave, they chose to reconsider what living on the site could mean.

 

Designed by Melbourne architecture and interior design studio Jolson, the house does not attempt to recover what was lost. Instead, it creates another kind of outlook. At its centre, a three-level courtyard filled with plants, terraces and cascading greenery becomes both the visual focus of the house and its principal source of light.

 

Completed after a six-year process, House of Light turns attention away from the surrounding city and towards vegetation, material, art and changing daylight.

 

BUILDING THE VIEW

 

The site has an earlier connection to Melbourne’s history. It was once occupied by converted stables built for horses that pulled some of the city’s first trams. Today, the house meets the street with a 14-metre-high façade composed of 26,000 handmade Spanish bricks.

 

Variations in tone, irregular coursing and softly contoured openings give the surface a more fluid quality, while changing daylight accentuates the texture of the masonry.

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The transition inside is deliberately pronounced. For Stephen Jolson, founder and creative director of Jolson, the entrance marks a shift from urban density to a quieter interior condition. Beyond it, the courtyard takes over.

 

Developed with landscape designer Florian Wild, the planting begins with a fernery below ground and rises through terraces and cascading vines. Over time, the vegetation is intended to form a loose veil between the rooms and the courtyard.

 

LIGHT AS MATERIAL 

 

Natural light is one of the house’s primary organising elements.

 

Rather than entering mainly from the perimeter, daylight is drawn vertically through the building and dispersed across pale, curved surfaces. Polished plaster walls shift between warm white and soft cream throughout the day, while the central stair carries light through several levels. Three flights rise beneath a curved, skylit ceiling, making the stair one of the clearest expressions of the project’s sectional approach.

 

“The shifting tone of natural light across curved plaster, the cool touch of stone underfoot, and the softened acoustics of layered surfaces all work together to create a deeply emotive experience,” says Jolson.

 

The house is arranged across five levels, from basement to third floor. The ground floor contains the entrance and a study facing the courtyard; bedrooms and bathrooms occupy the level above. In the main bedroom, an opening cut into the masonry captures sky and daylight without sacrificing privacy.