In 2016 we met inspiring an healthcare professional, Lester, when he engaged BNE to design a small renovation for his own home. A couple of years later Lester got back in touch to engage us on an ambitious project he had been dreaming up for some time.

This lovely bungalow is situated on a large rectangular block with an exceptionally wide street frontage. We re-imagined the house like a ship, in that you may want to wander to port and starboard in order to track the sunlight and garden aspects during the day.

Rhubarb Rhubarb is a beloved family business that has been at the Preston markets for 20 years. After a Brave New Eco renovation in 2016, they had already outgrown the space by 2018! Brave New Eco was engaged for a second time to design the fit out, with the larger industrial style shell presenting an opportunity to solve some of the workflow issues and improving the to the experience for both sides of the counter.

This project began in 2015 with the small scope of a new wheel-chair friendly bathroom design. Emboldened by the initial design process the clients decided to consolidate their long-term plans for the house into a full scale-renovation.

This project is the home of clients totally committed to living resourcefully in small spaces. These guys walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk - willing to do everything they can to reduce their energy use and create a low impact lifestyle for their family. 

Brave New Eco were engaged to personalise the storage and joinery for our client’s needs and help furnish the space for a boutique development in Port Melbourne with original high quality interior fit-out by Hecker Guthrie.

We first visited this 1950's cream brick bungalow on a generous 800sqm block back in 2013 for a sustainable design consultation. At the time the house had an overwhelming list of issues to be resolved, it was in disrepair, dim, dated, and freezing in winter. Most confoundedly, in the 1970's, a self-contained granny-flat had been built only 4 metres from the back of the house.

Preston Happy was completed in 2015 and was one of our few heroic-owner-builder jobs. When the clients came to us, they had already gutted the back of the house and removed their kitchen. Then having the realisation it should probably not go back where it was and that they needed some help to design a new one!

Nestled in the back streets of Brunswick is this sweet single-fronted terrace. BNE were engaged to design a new kitchen for the home- with a brief to create a super-efficient kitchen-for-one - with a small dishwasher, no gas and a only a bar fridge supplemented with a cool store corner pantry.

Most of our homes have a bit of outdoor space in which to make a garden. Time spent in a garden can induce a sense of peace and calm or mindfulness. As well as creating beauty, a garden brings a connection with nature, its seasons and rhythms. The understanding of this connection, of working with nature to nurture oneself, is most clearly expressed in a permaculture garden.

This grand old dame is an original Victorian mansion farm house that, once upon a time, sat on ten acres of Northcote farmland stretching down the hill to the Merri Creek. Now she resides on a built up Northcote street and is the beautiful quirky home of a creative family - full of nooks and crannies, stairwells, attics, light-wells, alcoves and beautiful art and objects.  

The lovely young family who live here wanted to upgrade the efficiency of their Californian bungalow and create better spaces for family life. Central to our design approach is a philosophy that believes a home should be an authentic expression of it's inhabitants' values. 

This was a fun project for a creative family - taking an already renovated home and adding the finishing touches whilst resolving a few things that weren't working.

The story of founder Megan’s dilapidated 1940s Californian bungalow in Melbourne's inner northern suburbs. Originally in was in a semi-derelict state and came with a heritage overlay, flood level restrictions, and a long narrow block. However, the site was extremely special, as it backed onto the Merri Creek wildlife corridor.

A modest living/dining-room cabinetry fit-out in a Clifton Hill townhouse. The brief was for a cabinet design to fulfil everyone's needs in this creative family - part DJ console; part TV alcove; part book and art object display; part play-nook for the children.

The owners of this lovely, modest Yarraville home were tripping over the washing baskets (and each other) in a dim, dysfunctional laundry and old bathroom.

A little project we worked on this year in the lovely Melbourne suburb of Rosanna that is full of large post-war brick houses on elevated blocks with established trees. It is the home of a keen gardener and every room looks out onto beautifully maintained native and productive gardens. 

This is one of those projects we affectionately call a 'LOVE' job. The inspiring clients - live at The Plummery in Northcote, an impressively productive 280sqm urban block. They are the type of home-owners we respect as they have finished all of the "less-glamourous-but-sensible-jobs" first - adding solar panels; setting up a nectre wood heater; installing home-made double glazing (bubble wrap); and building a wonderful sun-trap conservatory out of reclaimed materials that shelters seedlings, warms the house and even grows tropical fruit!

In Melbourne's inner-city Westgarth area, this grand old home is the definition of good bones with it's lofty ceilings, multiple bay windows and impressively wide proportions. Despite this, a previous renovation had created a kitchen and laundry that felt pokey, dysfunctional and was falling apart faster than the original home!