Kindred House.
Kindred House is an exercise in recovery rather than reinvention, demonstrating how thoughtful intervention can reveal the enduring qualities of an existing home while quietly adapting it for contemporary life.
Reworking a late-1960s residence in Adelaide’s inner suburb of Malvern, Urban Habitats looked beyond expansion to uncover the generosity, openness and connection to landscape that first defined the home.
Working entirely within the original footprint, the project preserves the house as an artefact of its era while allowing it to evolve naturally for a new generation of custodians. Previous renovations had gradually eroded the home’s inherent clarity, fragmenting movement and weakening the relationship between interior spaces and garden. Rather than adding more, the design carefully edits what exists, recovering the home’s original spatial intent through a series of measured interventions.
Organised once again around its central courtyard, the house unfolds as a continuous sequence of interconnected spaces where light, landscape and everyday life remain in constant dialogue. The reinstatement of the kitchen to its original location became a defining move, restoring it as the social heart of the home while strengthening connections between the courtyard, living areas and surrounding garden.
The material palette similarly draws from the home’s mid-century origins without resorting to nostalgia. Warm timber, expressive colour and tactile finishes reinterpret the optimism and honesty of the era through a contemporary lens, while restrained detailing provides a calm backdrop for the owners’ evolving collection of art, furniture and objects.
By retaining the existing structure and resisting the pressure to enlarge, Kindred House demonstrates the environmental and architectural value of working with what already exists. The result is a home defined by clarity, restraint and longevity, one that honours its original intent while supporting the rhythms of contemporary family life with confidence.
Architecture by Urban Habitats
Interiors by Urban Habitats
Build by Urban Habitats
Awards.
2026 Winner – Master Builder South Australia Building Awards
Building Excellence Award Winner
Contract Home over $2 million
Media.
Elle Decoration – This mid-century Australian house balances old and new in perfect harmony
There is a tendency, when renovating a mid-century home, to treat it as something to be either protected or undone. Kindred House by Urban Habitats resists both options, choosing instead to consider the old and new holistically. Designed in the 1960s, this house once had a generosity of scale that had become obscured over the years, with every intervention seeming to have added further layers of confusion, creating more disconnected rooms that separated the interior from its landscape.
Architecture, AU – Kindred House by Urban Habitats
In an exercise of restraint, Kindred House sees a realignment with the original intent and stylings of the home, through a contemporary lens.
