The hardworking design feature setting up this Brisbane home for entertaining
It’s business at the front and party at the back in this transformation of a classic Queenslander
4 min
T o homeowners in other east coast capitals, the inner suburbs of Brisbane are quite the surprise. Just minutes from the heart of the city, they are consistently populated with traditional Queenslanders positioned on generous sites. So generous, in fact, that the 500sqm or so block that this home in Paddington sits on is considered on the smaller side.
Architect Alexandra Buchanan was called in before the owners had even purchased the property in the highly desirable suburb to see if it had potential for renewal without having to sacrifice its original charm. Still in ‘very original’ condition, the three-bedroom weatherboard cottage had been virtually untouched over the years but was deemed in sound enough condition to make the transition into the 21st century.
Characterised by lightweight timber construction, decorative timberwork and verandas to keep out the sun, Queenslanders are most notable for being built on ‘stilts’. Constructed from the mid 1800s to after WWII, the increased air flow under the house helped to manage the climate, as well as mitigate flood risk and make it easier to build on uneven terrain.
The new owners, who were experienced builders and developers, were keen to let the original house shine while creating a significant contemporary extension at the rear that would make the most of the subtropical environment.
“It was a classic ‘worst house on the best street’ scenario in a tricky spot in the low point on the street,” Buchanan says. “In Brisbane there are overland flow issues which we had to overcome because this house is sitting in a low point.”
As demonstrated by the 2022 floods, Brisbane is on the Brisbane River floodplain. While Paddington is just under 5km from the CBD, it is subject to overland flow flooding which Brisbane City Council defines as ‘run-off that travels over the land during heavy rainfalls’ with depth and impact depending on the prevailing local conditions.
Safeguarding the house against future flooding was a top priority.
“It’s a low set, single-storey house with a lovely big back garden that raked up away from the street at the back of the property,” Buchanan explains.
“It’s on an elevated slab so the water way is still on the lower level under it. We don’t impede the water flow, the house is sitting above it so that you don’t know anything about it at all.”
Rather than continue with the traditional weatherboard construction at the front of the house, Buchanan specified a mix of concrete, stone and natural timber to create the two-storey extension to the rear. At the heart of this is a dramatic void above an open plan living space that takes in the kitchen, dining and living room.
“A lot of the design was about making sure we had good access to natural light while opening up the side of the house,” she says. “That’s why it has that beautiful void space in the heart of the house.
“When you come through the front door it reveals itself to you and it’s quite a dynamic space as the light tracks across it during the day.”
The articulated floorplan includes a second living space on the ground floor, specifically designed to have quite a different feel.
“We wanted to close off the second living space that addresses the garden because it’s a TV space,” Buchanan says. “It’s more intimate with a lower ceiling.”
Upstairs, there’s a library, as well as a spacious balcony off the main bedroom suite overlooking the garden and pool below.
But perhaps the real drawcard is the flow between indoor and outdoor spaces. Using the upper floor as an overhang, Buchanan designed a paved alfresco dining space that leads onto an outdoor living area that almost feels like an internal courtyard. Key to this is a large concrete planter that extends beyond the footprint of the upper floor to wrap around the outdoor living area. Built by master builders BBH Projects, landscaping by local firm Brooke’s Blooms has further enhanced the site by selecting a combination of architectural and hanging plants so that it’s hard to discern where the house ends and the garden begins.
“The brief was very much about the connection to the garden and having as much garden as we could afford them,” Buchanan says. “We live in subtropical Queensland so that indoor/outdoor flow with beautiful cross flow of air was critical.”
With neighbours to both sides and the rear, it was important to lean into the local landscape as much as possible.
“We had to juggle some proximity to the neighbours,” she says. “They had quite a beautiful, lush garden on their block and around them and their neighbour has some beautiful established trees so we made sure to enhance that to provide privacy.”
Taking on the weight of the hanging gardens would not have been possible without concrete.
“The benefits of having that concrete base allowed us to have the planting to carry the site and provide the screening,” she says. “It also allows for an outdoor fireplace which is embedded in that as well. It’s a very hard working element that integrates front and back.”
While visitors to the house are drawn to the dramatic living space and garden, for Buchanan, it’s the quiet moments in this house that please her the most.
“There’s a gorgeous informal meals area off the side which is one of my favourite spots,” she says. “You can imagine informal catch ups with friends happening there with a glass of wine while you’re in the kitchen. It could have been a dead corner but it gave it activation.”
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Weary of ‘smart’ everything, Americans are craving stylish ‘analog rooms’ free of digital distractions—and designers are making them a growing trend.
5 min
James and Ellen Patterson are hardly Luddites. But the couple, who both work in tech, made an unexpectedly old-timey decision during the renovation of their 1928 Washington, D.C., home last year.
The Pattersons had planned to use a spacious unfinished basement room to store James’s music equipment, but noticed that their children, all under age 21, kept disappearing down there to entertain themselves for hours without the aid of tablets or TVs.
Inspired, the duo brought a new directive to their design team.
The subterranean space would become an “analog room”: a studiously screen-free zone where the family could play board games together, practice instruments, listen to records or just lounge about lazily, undistracted by devices.
For decades, we’ve celebrated the rise of the “smart home”—knobless, switchless, effortless and entirely orchestrated via apps.
But evidence suggests that screen-free “dumb” spaces might be poised for a comeback.
Many smart-home features are losing their luster as they raise concerns about surveillance and, frankly, just don’t function.
New York designer Christine Gachot said she’d never have to work again “if I had a dollar for every time I had a client tell me ‘my smart music system keeps dropping off’ or ‘I can’t log in.’ ”
Google searches for “how to reduce screen time” reached an all-time high in 2025. In the past four years on TikTok, videos tagged #AnalogLife—cataloging users’ embrace of old technology, physical media and low-tech lifestyles—received over 76 million views.
And last month, Architectural Digest reported on nostalgia for old-school tech : “landline in hand, cord twirled around finger.”
Catherine Price, author of “ How to Break Up With Your Phone,” calls the trend heartening.
“People are waking up to the idea that screens are getting in the way of real life interactions and taking steps through design choices to create an alternative, places where people can be fully present,” said Price, whose new book “ The Amazing Generation ,” co-written with Jonathan Haidt, counsels tweens and kids on fun ways to escape screens.
From both a user and design perspective, the Pattersons consider their analog room a success.
Freed from the need to accommodate an oversize television or stuff walls with miles of wiring, their design team—BarnesVanze Architects and designer Colman Riddell—could get more creative, dividing the space into discrete music and game zones.
Ellen’s octogenarian parents, who live nearby, often swing by for a round or two of the Stock Market Game, an eBay-sourced relic from Ellen’s childhood that requires calculations with pen and paper.
In the music area, James’s collection of retro Fender and Gibson guitars adorn walls slicked with Farrow & Ball’s Card Room Green , while the ceiling is papered with a pattern that mimics the organic texture of vintage Fender tweed.
A trio of collectible amps cluster behind a standing mic—forming a de facto stage where family and friends perform on karaoke nights. Built-in cabinets display a Rega turntable and the couple’s vinyl record collection.
“Playing a game with family or doing your own little impromptu karaoke is just so much more joyful than getting on your phone and scrolling for 45 minutes,” said James.
Screen-Free ‘Escapes’
“Dumb” design will likely continue to gather steam, said Hans Lorei, a designer in Nashville, Tenn., as people increasingly treat their homes “less as spaces to optimise and more as spaces to retreat.”
Case in point: The top-floor nook that designer Jeanne Hayes of Camden Grace Interiors carved out in her Connecticut home as an “offline-office” space.
Her desk? A periwinkle beanbag chair paired with an ottoman by Jaxx. “I hunker down here when I need to escape distractions from the outside world,” she explained.
“Sometimes I’m scheming designs for a project while listening to vinyl, other times I’m reading the newspaper in solitude. When I’m in here without screens, I feel more peaceful and more productive at the same time—two things that rarely go hand in hand.”
A subtle archway marks the transition into designer Zoë Feldman’s Washington, D.C., rosy sunroom—a serene space she conceived as a respite from the digital demands of everyday life.
Used for reading and quiet conversation, it “reinforces how restorative it can be to be physically present in a room without constant input,” the designer said.
Laura Lubin, owner of Nashville-based Ellerslie Interiors, transformed a tiny guest bedroom in her family’s cottage into her own “wellness room,” where she retreats for sound baths, massages and reflection.
“Without screens, the room immediately shifts your nervous system. You’re not multitasking or consuming, you’re just present,” said Lubin.
As a designer, she’s fielding requests from clients for similar spaces that support mental health and rest, she said.
“People are overstimulated and overscheduled,” she explained. “Homes are no longer just places to live—they’re expected to actively support well-being.”
Designer Molly Torres Portnof of New York’s DATE Interiors adopted the same brief when she designed a music room for her husband, owner of the labels Greenway Records and Levitation, in their Lido Beach, N.Y. home. He goes there nightly to listen to records or play his guitar.
The game closet from the townhouse in “The Royal Tenenbaums”? That idea is back too, says Gachot. Last year she designed an epic game room backed by a rock climbing wall for a young family in Montana.
When you’re watching a show or on your phone, “it’s a solo experience for the most part,” the designer said. “The family really wanted to encourage everybody to do things together.”
Analog Accessories
Don’t have the space—or the budget—to kit out an entire retro rec room?
“There are a lot of small tweaks you can make even if you don’t have the time, energy or budget to design a fully analog room from scratch,” said Price.
Gachot says “the small things in people’s lives are cues of what the bigger trends are.”
More of her clients, she’s noticed, have been requesting retrograde staples, such as analog clocks and magazine racks.
For her Los Angeles living room, chef Sara Kramer sourced a vintage piano from Craigslist to be the room’s centerpiece, rather than sacrifice its design to the dominant black box of a smart TV. Alabama designer Lauren Conner recently worked with a client who bought a home with a rotary phone.
Rather than rip it out, she decided to keep it up and running, adding a silver receiver cover embellished with her grandmother’s initials.
Some throwback accessories aren’t so subtle. Melia Marden was browsing listings from the Public Sale Auction House in Hudson, N.Y. when she spotted a phone booth from Bell Systems circa the late 1950s and successfully bid on it for a few hundred dollars.
“It was a pandemic impulse buy,” said Marden.
In 2023, she and her husband, Frank Sisti Jr., began working with designer Elliot Meier and contractor ReidBuild to integrate the booth into what had been a hallway linen closet in their Brooklyn townhouse.
Canadian supplier Old Phone Works refurbished the phone and sold them the pulse-to-tone converter that translates the rotary dial to a modern phone line.
The couple had collected a vintage whimsical animal-adorned wallpaper (featured in a different colourway in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”) and had just enough to cover the phone booth’s interior.
Their children, ages 9 and 11, don’t have their own phones, so use the booth to communicate with family. It’s also become a favorite spot for hiding away with a stack of Archie comic books.
The booth has brought back memories of meandering calls from Marden’s own youth—along with some of that era’s simple joy. As Meier puts it: “It’s got this magical wardrobe kind of feeling.”
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