inside with eve wilson
Eve Wilson is a Melbourne-based photographer who captures interiors, food, portraits, and places with an organic and intuitive curiosity, bringing a clean, crisp warmth to every shot. She lives in Cremorne, Melbourne, with her family, in a home which presents as a tiny traditional workers cottage but is backed by a light-filled, modernist-inspired extension.
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Points of view are essential to this house, which looks very different depending on how you come at it. From the street, it appears to be little more than a tiny, traditional workers cottage, just over four meters wide. But peek down the laneway and you’ll see a mass of pink breeze blocks, vines entwined through them, flowers spilling out over glass, wood, and concrete. “It's quite spectacular,” Eve concedes. |
"The house was so tiny that it needed personality, creativity – not just open-plan, with a white box on the back. I wanted textures, colour, and lots of greenery." |
Inside, a palette of warm greens, and browns delineates its spaces, marking a passage from the old to the new. At the center, a glass-walled corridor connects the two, while a small green internal courtyard injects a sense of calm that permeates the whole building. It’s an easeful, elegant, and grounded home to the photographer, her husband Jon, and their two young daughters, Elliot, and June. Pleasingly for Eve, it offers up a new view almost every day. |
"I made sure we had as big a kitchen table as we could, for the space. I wanted to be able to do a few things there at once – I’ll read the paper with a coffee while the kids are drawing. There’s music going, and if they're lucky someone's made pancakes." |
The house is one of two tiny cottages, and we started living next door. We always eyed it, because it has a north-facing laneway, which is really good for Melbourne’s northern light. When we were lucky enough to buy it, it hadn't been touched since the 1950s. |
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When you enter the house, you start in the oldest space. That's still quite traditionally built, so it's still got the cornices, the lighting roses, and it's all in a palette of warm off-whites. But as you move through it, you come to greens – these tastes of the new section. There are two bedrooms, a bathroom, and my study, which are all in the old building. Essentially the two buildings are joined together by a walkway. There’s a large window to one side, and the tiniest little green courtyard which takes you down into the new space, all concrete, wood, greens, and the pink exterior. That's where you get all the texture and a completely different warmth. |
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"One of the things I love the most is when we're all using different spaces … Because of the courtyard, we can see through to where they are, and vice versa. There's this really nice connection; everyone's doing something different, but you still feel like you're all together." |
The site is only 4.27 metres wide, so I spent a long time looking for an architect who would be excited to do something innovative with this footprint. We have two kids and a dog, so we needed enough space for everyone to fit. The house was so tiny that it required personality, creativity – not just an open plan with a white box on the back. Studio Bright had some interesting ideas right off the bat; the house they first designed for us is not too different from where we ended up. |
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