Designing a Custom Home in Essendon North: Modern Living in a Heritage Streetscape
Essendon North is essentially a living museum of early-to-mid 20th-century Melbourne architecture. You've got everything from grand Victorian homes with ornate ironwork to modest Californian bungalows with their signature deep porches and clinker brick. Later, the Art Deco and post-war periods added geometric cream brick homes with streamlined forms.
This mix isn't random. It reflects how Melbourne grew outward from the CBD in concentric rings, particularly after the expansion of the railway and tram networks. The result is what planners call "high levels of intactness," especially in pockets like Kerferd Street and Orange Grove. These are protected character areas that define what makes Essendon North special.
For anyone building here, that means your new home can't just be about what you want. It has to speak the language of the street without resorting to fake historical details. You need interpretive design, which is a modern home that respects traditional proportions and materials without pretending to be something it's not. Let's discuss how to achieve this.
Which overlays and planning controls exist in Essendon North?
The Moonee Valley Planning Scheme uses several tools to manage development. The two big ones for custom builds are the Neighbourhood Character Overlay (NCO) and the Heritage Overlay (HO):
The Neighbourhood Character Overlay
This protects areas with a unique aesthetic and consistent feel. In Essendon North, this means the council will look very closely at your setbacks, roof form, materials, and even the amount of concrete you're putting down. They want new homes to maintain the "overall uniformity of character" created by the original housing stock.
Practically speaking, this means your new home needs to:
Respect the established front and side setbacks of neighbouring properties
Use pitched, low-hung roof forms that complement the traditional bungalows
Reflect the pattern of materials and colours found in the street
Minimise hard paving to keep that leafy, garden-centric feel
The Heritage Overlay
This one is concerned with historical and cultural significance. Properties might be listed as "significant," "contributory," or "non-contributory." If your site or a neighbouring property has heritage value, you'll need to demonstrate that your design won't obscure views or reduce the prominence of those heritage assets.
This is where our planning expertise becomes invaluable. We understand these overlays inside and out, and they know how to design within the framework rather than fighting against it. Our approach treats regulations not as roadblocks but as guidelines for creating high-quality, contextually designed solutions.
How to create a modern floor plan on a single-storey block
You want space. Maybe three or four bedrooms, open-plan living, a proper master suite upstairs? However, you can't have your new home towering over the Victorian cottage next door.
The solution is what's called the "recessive pavilion" strategy. Essentially, you design a single-storey front section that aligns with the street's character, then set the second storey well back from the front façade. From the street, the single-storey component remains the dominant visual element. But from inside, you've got soaring ceilings, upper-level living spaces, and all the modern luxury you're after.
Council planners often require that higher rear sections be "concealed" or "partly concealed" from the street. This is about ensuring the new building doesn't dominate the heritage streetscape.
How to design the right Essendon street look
Heritage homes in Essendon North typically feature what planners call "articulation." These façades are broken into smaller volumes rather than presenting as flat, monolithic walls. Think projecting front rooms, return verandahs, and deep porches that create shadow lines and visual interest.
Your modern home should echo this rhythm without copying it directly. We achieve this through:
Using overhangs and recessed entryways to create depth, similar to a traditional verandah
Matching the vertical emphasis of Victorian and Edwardian windows or the horizontal lines of Interwar and Art Deco homes
Heritage homes weren't designed for cars, so modern garages need to be visually unobtrusive (typically set back at least 2 meters behind the front wall and limited to 4 meters in width to avoid a garage-dominated façade)
The goal is to create a façade that feels like it belongs, even though it's clearly contemporary.
Which materials should you use?
The material palette in Essendon North is rich with texture and history, featuring clinker brick, terracotta tiles, timber weatherboards, and ornate ironwork. Your new home needs to reference this palette without resorting to historical mimicry:
Clinker brick is the defining material of Interwar bungalows in this area. These bricks were produced through high-heat sintering, resulting in unique, often misshapen bricks with colours ranging from deep reds to purples and blacks. Modern manufacturing can't replicate the original firing techniques, so exact matches are nearly impossible.
Spotted Gum is an Australian hardwood that has become popular in luxury Melbourne builds because it creates cohesion between heritage façades and modern extensions. Use the same species for external cladding, decking, and internal joinery, and you establish a sense of flow that connects traditional and contemporary elements.
Other sympathetic alternatives include galvanised steel or flat-profile ceramic tiles instead of traditional terracotta, vertical shiplap cladding instead of weatherboards, and thermally broken aluminium windows with slim frames that replicate the fine-line aesthetic of heritage joinery while meeting modern energy standards.
Balancing contemporary interiors with external respect
The exterior needs to respect the street, but the interior is your playground. We love open-plan kitchen, dining, and family areas that are light-soaked and designed for wellbeing, which is a far cry from the compartmentalised, dark corridors of original heritage homes.
We specialise in removing long passages and combining rooms to create informal, flexible living environments. These strategies help us achieve this:
Light courts and skylights are essential for bringing daylight into the centre of narrow blocks without compromising neighbour privacy
Broken-plan layouts mean that instead of one vast echo chamber, we use joinery dividers or half-height walls to define zones while preserving sightlines
Indoor-outdoor integration with retractable glass walls and seamless flooring that extend living spaces into the garden
Technology should be concealed rather than showcased. Smart lighting, integrated appliances, and discreet automation systems provide modern convenience without overshadowing the home's aesthetic integrity.
Where to find custom homes Essendon North trusts?
Our process is built around transparency and unconditional support. By carefully managing our workload, we ensure each project receives full attention from designers and tradespeople alike.
For anyone ready to build in Essendon North, partnering with a planning-aware local expert ensures your dream home is built exactly as imagined, without unpleasant surprises. It's architectural stewardship at its finest, modern living thriving within a heritage context. Let's chat about your build today.