Fresh Air

The owner’s former childhood home has been reinvented for her own family in an easy style that marries Spanish Mission and Hollywood Regency without missing a beat.

- Chris Pearson

The home of cookbook author Stephanie Conley, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, has turned a fresh page. This was once her childhood home, but now, thanks to a smart renovation by architect Luigi Rosselli and Stephanie’s deft decorating, it has effected its own generational shift.

When her father passed away about 11 years ago, Stephanie and her sister were unsure what to do with the Arts and Crafts-style house. It wasn’t until her first son was born that she considered its potential as a family home. But the five-bedroom house was hamstrung by its past, squandering its prime position over Sydney Harbour. Large windows, added in a 70s renovation, embraced the view but didn’t connect with the garden, and the main entry was via narrow steps down the side, “like the tradesman’s entrance, not dignified”, says Luigi.

“I wanted to keep the house intact, as it was the place I grew up in, yet make it new and contemporary, more suited to family living,” says Stephanie, who hired Luigi on a friend’s recommendation. “He came up with amazing plans to give the house a new face without destroying it.”

Keeping the Federation facade, Luigi demolished clumsy add-ons on the harbour side, reducing the home to its original shell. “It was an exercise in addition and subtraction,” he says. Along that facade, he installed steel balustrades and banks of steel-framed windows, a Luigi hallmark evoking his roots in industrial Milan. Many front onto a vast new terrace which he added along that side of the house.