Mark Jeavons and Ohlo Studio restore 1970s home in Australia

Australian architect Mark Jeavons worked with interior design practice Ohlo Studio to restore Tomich House, a heritage-listed 1970s house in City Beach, Perth.

Originally designed by brutalist Bulgarian architect Iwan Iwanoff in 1971, the home features a landscaped garden and sculptural curved walls built from white-painted concrete blocks.

Tomich House had recently been acquired by new owners, who tasked Jeavons and Ohlo Studio with returning it to its original state as far as possible following a series of extensions and changes made since its completion.

"Over the years, the house underwent several additions and alterations, including a significant three-level extension in 1986 that deviated from Iwanoff's original vision," Jeavons told Dezeen.

"Our design approach focused on carefully replanning the awkward, organic floor plan to create clear visual connections through the house and reconnect it to the surrounding landscape," he added.

The ground floor of Tomich House has been opened up to provide a better relationship between the living and dining area and the outdoors, with two large granite columns removed to create a visual link from the front door to the back garden.

On the first floor, two previously compartmentalised bedrooms at the centre of the plan have been converted into a skylit study and landing, connecting to the bedrooms around the perimeter and a separate studio apartment to the west.

"One of the opportunities we embraced was opening the house up to its natural environment by reestablishing or creating new visual and physical connections to the rear garden and outdoor spaces, which had been lost due to previous renovations," said Jeavons.

"The house was designed with a strong sense of geometry, with arced walls radiating out from the core, creating a unique floor plan," Jeavons added.

"One of the key changes made was reworking the layout to restore this original flow, while also making the house more functional for modern living," he added.

Bespoke desks and cabinets were created to make some of the more awkward areas of Iwanoff's "organic" floor plan more usable.

To the east, the home's spiral staircase has been updated with plate steel, while bathrooms housed within a circular area to the west have been refurbished with small Japanese tile work on the walls and floors.

Ohlo Studio led on the interior design for the refurbishment, which rather than being a "faithful restoration" looked to offer a modern take on the materials and finishes that would have featured in the original home.

The white-painted blockwork and piers have been exposed throughout, complemented by dark wood in the living areas and open metal balustrades.

"Because so much had been changed from the original design over the years, I visited a number of houses that had been built in the same period to get a sense of what might have been," said Ohlo Studio founder Jen Lowe.

"The aim was never to undertake a complete and faithful restoration but we did recognise that there should be a link between now and then across scale, material sensibility, detail and the poetry of light in his buildings," she added.

Other recent home renovations in Australia include Gardener's House, a suburban residence in Melbourne overhauled by Splinter Society to maximise its connection to the garden and Zuzana & Nicholas's conversion of a Brisbane cottage into its own home and studio.

The photography is by Jack Lovel.

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