Victoria's best new residential architecture

The Guardian

28-06-2025

Winner of the Harold Desbrowe Annear Award. 'Living spaces and the landscape spaces are as fluid as possible,' says Lyon about this family home in Melbourne. 'Even the walls themselves are quite monumental.' Photograph: Rory Gardiner/Studio Bright
The house is shaped like a Tetris T-block, with the bedrooms running along the main length of the property, and the living room and kitchen in the smallest wing. This layout 'challenges the conventional idea of a house,' says Lyon. 'The relationship between the garden and house has become blurred.' He says it's a great model for suburban living that counteracts the stereotypical McMansion that has yards at the front and back of the house. Photograph: Rory Gardiner/Studio Bright
Commendation. This family home is a graceful place, Lyon says. 'It's a well-crafted, delicate house and the clients here were looking for something the family could live in comfortably. Everything is well-thought through.' Photograph: Pier Carthew/markowitzdesign + Stavrias Architecture
Inside feels like a continuation of the materials used outside, adds Lyon. Bedrooms for the parents and kids sit at opposite ends of the property, with the main living zones in the middle. Photograph: Pier Carthew/markowitzdesign + Stavrias Architecture
Commendation. Traditional rural materials, such as galvanised steel, have been elevated in a sculptural way here, says Lyon about the South Gippsland holiday home. 'It's a farm house, but it has that cutting-edge quality.' Its cladding exterior is a bushfire-resistant solution too. Photograph: Tom Blachford/Neil Architecture
'The exteriors are an ode to the working rural farm shed, but inside it's warm timber, inviting you inside,' says Lyon. Photograph: Tom Blachford/Neil Architecture
Architecture award winner. 'This one has a nostalgic quality, of what we remember a childhood visit to a beach house to be like,' Lyon says. 'It's informal, quirky, indoor-outdoor – you're in the trees, with the gravel outside.' Photograph: multiplicity
The property also won the architecture award in the interior design category: 'You're allowed to walk around with your thongs on and wet bathers,' says Lyon of the practical and joyful design. 'That's a deliberate decision, to be able to use the house without fear.' Photograph: multiplicity
Commendation. Both a working sheep farm and a home, this property is an example of architecture that works with the environment. 'You get a sense of which parts are the house and which are for working, but it is unified and that is primarily because of the consistency of the colour of the Colorbond, which goes well with the green of the land,' Lyon says. Photograph: Dave Kulesza/MRTN
Inside is a place for the owners to retreat from their work, says Lyon, without losing that connection to the land. Photograph: Dave Kulesza/MRTN
Architecture award winner. 'The concrete is an aesthetic choice but also a choice of requirement,' says Lyon about this bunker-style holiday home. 'It's a representation of the high-flame zone requirements [for the area].' The jury noted it was 'a call to rethink how and where we build in a fire-prone future', as the project was initially deemed unbuildable. '[It] addresses risk with resolve,' they said. Photograph: Sharyn Cairns/KTA
'You have this amazing, infinite view of the horizon from the inside,' says Lyon.
Photograph: Sharyn Cairns/KTA