Circular Key

Reflecting the natural world into the interiors, a deep, spherical pool anchors a well-rounded home renovation that embraces the curve.

- Carli Philips

Melburnians love to talk about the weather. The propensity to have four seasons in one day, the cold snaps, the big chills, the cool changes, the humidity, the unrelenting heat. It all makes having a pool rather a sensitive operation. A generous, glittering expanse may be ripe for summer, but at the start of autumn refreshing aqua can quickly turn into an eyesore of murky, layered debris.

For their renovation, homeowners Sheree and Jonathan Burge were adamant they “didn’t want the standard paradigm of a pool collecting leaves in the backyard for a large portion of the year and not being appreciated”, recalls architect Patrick Kennedy of Kennedy Nolan. Instead, they wanted a pool in the heart of the property. “I am always trying to put people’s swimming pools in the middle so for me it was great,” says Patrick, who had managed to persuade only two clients to do this in the past.

The concept works well in Melbourne if done sensitively, he says. “We have hot summers but long, coolish winters so the pool needed to be something more than just to swim in. It needed to have another role that was something you could passively enjoy. So for this house we created a circular shape that doesn’t look like the typical backyard swimming pool but has a deep, pond-like effect. It is not a big site so placing it centrally was always going to be very impactful.” Further enhanced by olive-green mosaics, it is inspired by the “calm river water” of the nearby Yarra River and Merri Creek waterways.