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There was plenty of scope for things to go wrong for this home reno

There was plenty of scope for things to go wrong for this home reno

The Age18-07-2025
When a Sydney-based architect took on a Melbourne couple's home reno, there was plenty of scope for things to go wrong.
Surprisingly, given the variety and choice of architects in Melbourne, the owners' search ended beyond Victoria's border. Complicating things further was the client's architecture background. Would they be tempted to change, interfere and make the process more challenging?
Luckily for Sydney's Pohio Adams Architects, the clients – a couple with two children – were open to pushing the envelope as much as running with ideas. And what started out as a tired old Edwardian house in St Kilda is now a light-filled family contemporary home that also creates touchstones to the past.
The client, who only worked as an architect for a relatively short period, had been in the same year in the school of architecture at Auckland University as Bianca Pohio, a director of the practice.
'There were few constraints when it came to the design. Our client regularly travels the world looking at great architecture, including by architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier,' says Pohio, who worked closely with her life and business partner, architect Chris Adams. 'I've known this client for 30 years, so there's also that element of trust,' she adds.
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Located in a leafy heritage streetscape, the Edwardian house set on a 475-square-metre site, was always going to be retained. However, the house – renovated over intervening years with a number of Arts & Crafts and Art Deco elements – 'fell away' at the back with a poorly added lean-to. 'We were also faced with a three-level apartment block to the rear of the property which meant that we had to address issues such as overlooking,' says Adams.
Pohio Adams Architects retained the front four rooms of the period home but reworked them into two separate bedrooms for the children and a large main bedroom and an en suite – with the remainder of the space used as a separate bathroom.
Beyond this more traditional arrangement with open fireplaces and decorative plaster ceilings, the house starts to express new forms and materials.
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Revealed: Which Sydney beaches could lose shark nets this summer
Revealed: Which Sydney beaches could lose shark nets this summer

Daily Telegraph

time20 hours ago

  • Daily Telegraph

Revealed: Which Sydney beaches could lose shark nets this summer

Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News. Exclusive: Shark nets could be ripped out at some of Sydney's most popular beaches – including world-famous Bondi – this summer for the first time since the 1930s, as the Minns government faces mounting pressure from greenie suburban councils. This is despite no fatal shark attacks being recorded on protected Harbour City beaches since the 1930s and the state government's own shark management experts confirming dangerous species, such as bull sharks, are lurking around our beaches for longer due to warmer water temperatures. The shock move has prompted tourism businesses to warn just one shark attack could derail the lucrative tourist trade. The Sunday Telegraph can reveal Waverley, Northern Beaches and Central Coast councils have been asked to nominate one beach where they want shark nets removed this summer – after pushing to have them all scrapped. In a letter sent to their mayors this week, the three councils were invited to 'participate in the trial' and choose 'one beach … you do not want netted in the 2025/26 shark management program'. Shark management experts have confirmed dangerous species, such as bull sharks, are lurking around our beaches for longer due to warmer water temperatures. Picture: Fiona Ayerst The offer comes after eight coastal councils that usually deploy shark nets, spanning 51 beaches from Newcastle to Wollongong, all voted to dump the meshing program due to concerns about marine life bycatch in the last year. For Waverley Council in the eastern suburbs, there are only two netted beaches to choose from – Bondi and Bronte – meaning two of the busiest and most famous beaches in the country could have no nets this summer. Northern Beaches Council has 13 locations to choose from including Manly, Palm Beach, Dee Why and Narrabeen beaches. On the Central Coast, Terrigal, Avoca, Copacabana and Umina Beach are up for selection. The three councils were chosen for the trial as they have been the most vocal about doing away with meshing after the state government looked to give councils the choice to remove nets – an offer that has since been walked back. Councils have been given until August 22 to nominate their selected beaches to go net-free. Shark nets are due to be installed on September 1. However, Premier Chris Minns and his ministers will ultimately have the final say next month. SW Shark Management program leader Marcel Green deploying the daily drum lines off Manly Beach. Picture: Thomas Lisson If it goes ahead, it will be one of the biggest changes to the state's meshing program since it was introduced in 1937. But this would not be the only change, with nets set to be removed one month early again next year after they were taken down on March 31 to ensure they did not affect migrating turtles. This is despite NSW Shark Management program leader Marcel Green warning that, as water temperatures warm, bull sharks are hanging around our beaches for longer and 'arriving earlier and leaving later by a few days' in spring and autumn. Surfing writer Fred Pawle said the nets, which are 150m long, six metres deep and set 10-12m below the surface, are designed to have a 'mouse trap effect', which he claimed is needed more than ever. 'Fisherman, divers, surfers and swimmers are all reporting that shark numbers are out of control,' Mr Pawle said. 'So it's not a sensible decision to remove nets. It's deliberately endangering lives in order to pander to Green voters, most of whom never go in the water.' Sarah Charlton, Eden Lorenia and Alice Charlton say the nets give beachgoers 'peace of mind'. Picture: Jonathan Ng More than 50 sharks were sighted on Sydney say beaches in the last month alone, according to independent shark alert system Dorsal. 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Cairns women's shed opens as sector ponders its future
Cairns women's shed opens as sector ponders its future

ABC News

time3 days ago

  • ABC News

Cairns women's shed opens as sector ponders its future

Men's sheds outnumber McDonald's restaurants in Australia. While the fast food giant has about1,000 stores, more than 1,200 men's sheds have sprung up across the country since the first one opened its doors in Goolwa, South Australia, in the 1990s. For three decades, they've offered blokes a place to do craftwork "shoulder to shoulder", as the organisation's motto goes, and shone a much-needed spotlight on men's mental health issues. They now serve more than 50,000 members or "shedders", but with an ageing cohort and more groups in society calling for their own sheds, there are questions around how the movement will evolve. Ever since Wendy Bryant's father helped set up the Cairns Men's Shed in the 2000s, she thought the city's women should have something similar too. Almost 20 years on, Ms Bryant on Friday cut the ribbon at Far North Queensland's first women's shed — She Shed Cairns — which her family's construction company and dozens of local businesses and volunteers helped build. The 68-year-old was a keen potter before a degenerative brain disease curtailed her hobby. She is now looking forward to enjoying other crafty pursuits and companionship at the shed with the help of her carer. Ms Bryant's story resonated with She Shed Cairns founder Jane Mitchell, who knew two young mums who suffered debilitating strokes in their 30s and 40s and saw how crafting helped them find some joy and purpose again. "But a nice space to come and connect with other women was really missing," Ms Mitchell said. The new Cairns shed joins more than 60 women's sheds throughout Australia. The founder of a Perth-based women's shed, Michelle Slater, began the process of forming the Australian Women's Shed Association (AWSA) 18 months ago to give female shedders a national voice. "We have a constitution drafted, I have a board waiting to go, we're literally just after that initial seed funding to launch," she said. Ms Slater said securing a space and funding were significant challenges for individual women's sheds. While they can access some state-based funding, they are not eligible for $1 million in annual grants under the federal government's National Shed Development Program. The federal health department said the program was specifically tied to its National Men's Health Strategy to address higher rates of loneliness and isolation experienced by older men. But AWSA said women's sheds deserved their own dedicated funding. Gender exclusivity has long been the basis upon which men's sheds were founded and a major reason for their success and proliferation. But gender integration is occurring to varying degrees in some locations, from men's sheds that have "ladies" or mixed days to community sheds that are gender-inclusive, such as the one in Coburg, Victoria. The Australian Men's Shed Association (AMSA) has also been supporting emerging women's sheds with advice and sharing insurance and manuals. AMSA executive officer David Helmers said there were many benefits to diversifying the shed movement, such as sharing costs and resources and attracting new members. "I think where there is a bit of pushback is at an individual level," he said. Mr Helmers said retaining gender-exclusive spaces was still important for many communities. "We acknowledge we don't want men's sheds to all become co-ed," he said. "We created a space with tools and equipment so men felt comfortable talking to each other. "When it becomes a shared space, those conversations could stop." Ms Slater said gender-exclusive spaces were also "really powerful" for many women, such as those escaping domestic violence. "It was really helpful for them to have a space where they felt safe and where they could come and learn skills that were traditionally exclusive to men," she said. But Ms Slater said a one-size-fits-all approach would not work and each community needed to work out the best way to accommodate its aspiring shedders. Mr Helmers said it made sense that the men's shed movement would evolve. AMSA was making changes to broaden its work, including trials to attract younger men, which required sheds to open in the evenings to accommodate those who work during the day. "How men's sheds will change into the future and how women's sheds will evolve remains to be seen," he said. Ms Slater said women's sheds had diverse offerings tailored to their communities, such as one in the Northern Territory that focused on bush medicine. At She Shed Cairns, aside from the traditional arts and crafts, lessons in financial literacy and home maintenance have also been included after Ms Mitchell was bombarded with requests. "I now know women over the age of 50 are at the biggest risk of homelessness," Ms Mitchell said. "I've found an ex-financial planner who's willing to give her time, and we have a lovely lady who's come on board to teach woodwork, so hopefully we can empower women to be more confident with power tools and maintain their own home."

Beyond 'Bad Kid': Navigating modern parenting challenges for emotional intelligence
Beyond 'Bad Kid': Navigating modern parenting challenges for emotional intelligence

The Age

time3 days ago

  • The Age

Beyond 'Bad Kid': Navigating modern parenting challenges for emotional intelligence

, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. A child is standing in the doorway of a living room holding a pink Barbie campervan aloft. Her expression is focused as she takes aim, ready to launch it at her sister's head. The child is mine. And I am out of my depth. Just as she is about to throw the toy van, I leap forward and grab it from her hands. She races back to her room to find another missile. We perform this dance three times – 'I won't let you throw,' I say – before she changes tack and heads to the kitchen, where she takes a pair of scissors from the drawer, sits down on the floor and inserts a finger defiantly ­between the open blades. My brain scans the various parenting tips I've been consuming lately on social media : All feelings are welcome, all behaviours are not; Punishment is ineffective for improving behaviour; They can't regulate their emotions, but you can regulate yours; This is not a bad kid, this is a good kid having a hard time; I can cope with this. Only I'm not sure that I can. And I truly don't know how to handle it. In the olden days – when you and I were growing up – the advice was simple. We'd have grabbed that bloody campervan from her hands, said a few choice words, perhaps even thrown it in the bin, and sent her to her room to think about what she'd done. Sadly, for anyone fluent in this approach, it is ineffective at raising a well-regulated, emotionally intelligent human. Rather, the so‑called 'behaviourist approach' is associated with a lack of independence, low self-esteem and aggression, says Dr Billy Garvey, a Melbourne-based developmental paediatrician and author of Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child's Mental Health . As research into childhood development has grown, behaviourism has given way to the boundary-less, permissive-parenting approach. Applying this approach might mean we'd have taken the hit from the campervan missile and then comforted the distressed child who threw it at us. The permissive approach (which Garvey says people often misconstrue as being the same as 'gentle' parenting) is also ­ineffective and can increase hostility towards authority figures, lower empathy and stoke peer conflict. Loading Today, the advice is not so simple. A new breed of parenting educators has taken over the internet and is changing the way the next generation of kids is being raised. The wildly swinging parenting pendulum has settled on a muddier middle. It focuses more on the ­parent's feelings than the child's, and would neither punish my daughter nor let her throw the campervan at her sister's (or my) head. So what on earth is one to do? I take heart from the fact that many of these new parenting educators are also stuck in the muddiness of it all and that they, too, have questioned the sanity of their child as well as the sanctity of their parenting. The bomb drops On the day that I arrive at Genevieve Muir's bungalow-style home in a leafy suburb of Sydney's lower north shore, she's forgotten I'm coming. There is a pile of laundry on the dining table and, though her hair is still immaculate from a morning television appearance, the mum of four boys, aged between eight and 15, appears frazzled. Genevieve Muir had a 'bomb drop' moment after attending a parenting course recommended by a nurse at a community health centre. Credit: Once we've settled into the comfortable navy lounges with a pot of green tea, her groodle Poppy nuzzling me (or the baklava in my hand), the 46-year-old social worker tells me about her low point as a parent. At the end of one particularly long and hot day, she had finally got her three-month-old son, who had reflux, to sleep. Just as Muir was about to leave the nursery, her two-year-old son exploded into the room, roaring like a lion, and started shaking the bassinet. Muir, then in her early 30s, was apoplectic. 'I thought, 'What is wrong with my child?' ' She did what any self-respecting, behaviourist-reared person would do: she yelled at her son, shamed him for waking his baby brother and punished him. Of course, her two-year-old kept behaving like a two-year-old, hitting, pushing, biting and melting down, while her newborn with reflux kept crying. 'When they cried and cried and nothing would fix it, like toddlers can, that felt like nails down a chalkboard,' says Muir, author of Little People, Big Feelings . Several months later, she found herself ­sitting in her local community health centre crying about how awful her children were. When the nurse gently suggested she try a course on parenting, Muir felt deeply offended. 'I was like, 'Does she not know who I am? I'm a social worker, I'm the daughter of a therapist, I do not need a parenting course. My problem is the children.' ' It's difficult to be a regulated, calm parent all the time. 'We all have crappy days when we want to flip the bird.' Maggie Dent, author Yet desperation makes us do strange things. She did the course and felt a 'bomb drop'. The bomb was learning that certain emotions trigger us, probably because when we were children those emotions were rejected, or were the cause of punishment from caregivers. Now, as parents ourselves, those same emotions in our children elicit a visceral response in us. The instinct when they are upset, whinge, act out or disobey is to yell, smack, shame or send them to their rooms as we were sent to ours. 'When a child has a meltdown, we're telling parents to sit alongside them, but they've never had that modelled to them,' Muir says. For the first time, Muir felt self-compassion and understood her own reactions. It was a skill that would later inform the parenting classes she runs at Sydney's Mater Hospital, her book, and the clips she posts to her 67,000 followers on Instagram. (Muir also has 70,000 followers on TikTok and 16,000 on Facebook.) 'Sometimes the bigger problems with our children is our stuff, not their stuff,' says Maggie Dent, author of Mothering Our Boys and Muir's friend and mentor. It's difficult to be a regulated, calm parent all the time, adds Dent, who has a following of 191,000 on Instagram. 'We all have crappy days when we want to flip the bird. [We should just] aim to be a good-enough parent.' What being a 'good-enough' parent means in practice is having compassion for ourselves when the kids and home life in general are starting to feel a bit overwhelming. It also means having empathy for our kids. I have at times wondered how I can expect them to have their emotional shit together when their 44-year-old mother doesn't always have hers. And it means learning to hold the boundary, without being an arsehole. At least, most of the time. Maggie Dent says that sometimes the problems with our children are actually 'our stuff'. Credit: Dylan Coker / Dreamchaser When I talk to Professor Sophie Havighurst, a parenting researcher at Melbourne University, she says something that sticks with me. These practices – boundaries, self-compassion, empathy, warmth – are not just parenting skills, they are relationship skills. It's obvious, but it strikes me because I've always thought of parenting as an instinct, or as an in-built capacity that we either have or do not have, not a relationship skill or a skill we must learn and practise. 'No wonder we feel like shit when it's hard,' says Dr Becky, a child psychologist with more than 3.5 million followers on social media, in a recent clip on Instagram. 'The only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were parented. It's like being raised in English and wanting to teach your kid Mandarin and to speak to them in Mandarin. I don't think anyone would think Mandarin is going to come naturally. You're going to have to learn it and practise it and in your hardest, stressful moments, you would speak English. That doesn't mean the Mandarin is not working.' The demand for the advice of the Dr Beckys, Muirs, Dents and Garveys of the world, as well a range of unqualified parenting educators, is high. In the past five years, the online parenting market has become a multibillion-dollar business. On Instagram alone, the hashtag #parenting appears more than 23 million times, while #parentingtips is tagged more than 4.6 million times. In this unregulated space, much content is designed to get clicks and ad revenue by preying on parents' insecurities and fears they are not doing enough, let alone doing anything right. At its worst, it creates pressure, shame, confusion and the sense that everybody else is doing a better job ('They're bloody not,' says Dent, god love her), and can steer us in the wrong direction, making us dismiss our better instincts. Some of the advice is also 'potentially harmful', says Garvey, a father of two who has more than 50,000 followers on social media; for instance, the message to new mums to 'just relax' and enjoy being with their baby, when up to 30 per cent have postnatal depression. Melbourne-based developmental paediatrician Dr Billy Garvey warns that advice on social media can be potentially harmful. Credit: 'Other messaging says, 'for a certain price, I'll show you how to make a baby sleep',' Garvey tells me. 'So many new parents are desperate, and when they pay and try that method but it doesn't work, they think that they're the ones who are failing – not the program that was developed by someone without developmental training and who just saw a financial opportunity.' But there is also advice that can provide much-needed perspective and a guide to a deeper, more enjoyable connection with our children. Muir suspects this desire is driving the demand for social media parenting: we know we want to do it differently, but we don't yet know how to do it differently. Regulating emotions I never thought I'd say this, but this new generation of parenting educators on social media has helped me. The scraps of advice they provide have become mantras to approach parenting in a way that feels kinder (to myself and to my daughters) and more accepting of the mess. It doesn't prevent the rise of frustration and the instinct to threaten punishments when they turn into deranged, fire-breathing dragons because I've brought them the wrong snack. And it doesn't mean I now know how to perfectly navigate missile or scissor stand-offs. But I can practise a little self-compassion to regulate my own emotions in the moment, and I appreciate that it is hard for anyone to know what to do sometimes.

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