BRANCHING OUT

Thanks to their architect son, Elspeth and Brian Noxon gained a beautifully bespoke home on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula – the perfect place to share with family and to savour their retirement.

- Chris Pearson

Many architects and interior designers avoid designing homes for family and friends. “It has the potential to go wrong,” says Justin Noxon of Noxon architects, who challenged that notion by creating this luminous, airy house for his parents, Elspeth and Brian Noxon, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

And what a happy outcome. According to his parents, it’s the best house they have ever lived in, fitting them like a glove and future-proofing their retirement years. And who better than their son to understand and interpret their needs, now and in the future?

Elspeth and Brian bought the property in 2015, with an eye to preserving the Mid-Century cottage at its centre, a small gesture of defiance against the increasing prevalance of ‘McMansions’ in the area. But as much as they loved its crisp style of architecture, the cottage had shortcomings: a leaky roof, mould, and tiny windows that short-changed the rural panorama at its doorstep. Most worrying of all, it was clad in asbestos sheeting.

At the time, the couple were living on an 8-hectare farm nearby and looking to downsize, but they weren’t convinced this home was the right place to resettle. While they considered whether to retain the property or on-sell it, Justin, a lover of Mid-Century domestic architecture, pressed on with rejuvenating the cottage.

He stripped the building down to the timber frame and restumped it. But the biggest transformation was the addition of a vast open-plan living area on the eastern side, which looks straight up the valley and down to an idyllic golden pond below. “We opened the house up to the view and the morning light,” says Justin.