There’s a particular kind of renovation that begins not with ambition but with necessity. A home that isn’t working, a layout that frustrates daily life, a flooding problem that refuses to be ignored. The Hanging Garden House in New Farm is one of those projects, except that what started as a practical problem to solve ended as something far more extraordinary than a fix.
FOLAR Architecture & Interiors director James Foley and his team faced a clear brief: take a run-down pre-1946 cottage that had been inundated in recent floods and had suffered from excessive heat caused by a dysfunctional layout, and transform it into a home that genuinely worked for a family of five. The result, completed in 2024 and built by Pagewood Projects, is a two-level renovation and extension that blends the existing cottage character with a sophisticated contemporary addition, and delivers something the family described as feeling like a holiday every single day.
Solving the Flood Problem First
Before any design conversation could begin in earnest, the flood risk had to be resolved. The solution was structural and decisive: a new ground floor elevated above flood levels, finished in burnished concrete, that accommodates the living, dining, and kitchen spaces. By lifting the primary living areas entirely out of flood risk, the design doesn’t just solve the immediate problem. It future-proofs the home against the kind of flooding events that are a genuine and recurring reality for riverside New Farm properties.
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The burnished concrete finish that runs throughout the ground floor serves a dual purpose. Practically, it’s an incredibly durable, low-maintenance surface suited to family life with three teenagers. Aesthetically, it provides a calm, considered base for the whole interior, allowing natural timber and neutral tones throughout to read warmly against it.
A Sculptural Stair at the Heart of the Home
The ground-floor living spaces are centred on a sculptural stair that serves as both the home’s organisational spine and its most striking interior feature. Rather than treating circulation as something to minimise and conceal, FOLAR made it a moment worth experiencing, a daily reminder that moving through a well-designed home is a pleasure in its own right.
The stairs connect the elevated ground floor to the upper level, where the home’s more private spaces, including the master suite, are oriented to take advantage of the city’s aspect. It’s a considered separation of the home’s two modes: the generous, communal openness of the ground floor and the quieter, more private quality of the level above.
The Subtropical Hanging Garden Terrace
The project takes its name from one of its most distinctive features: a subtropical hanging-garden terrace that brings lush greenery into the home’s vertical plane and creates an outdoor living space unlike anything a conventional extension would provide.
The terrace is designed for two things simultaneously: family gathering and serious entertaining. A BBQ area overlooks the pool below, with the hanging garden creating a sense of green enclosure that feels genuinely lush and subtropical without requiring the footprint of a traditional garden. It’s a clever response to the realities of an inner-city New Farm block, where outdoor space is precious, and every square metre needs to work hard.
Natural timbers and neutral tones complement the interior throughout, carrying the warmth of the materials palette into the outdoor spaces and creating the seamless indoor-outdoor connection that defines the best subtropical residential design.
The Crowning Piece: A Rooftop Terrace With 360-Degree Views
Above it all sits the home’s crowning feature: a rooftop terrace with 360-degree views across Brisbane. In a city with a skyline that genuinely rewards elevation, this is the kind of space that justifies the entire exercise. A place to sit, exhale, and take in the city from a vantage point that most New Farm homes simply don’t offer.
For a family that had previously endured the heat and frustration of a dysfunctional old cottage, the rooftop terrace is perhaps the most symbolic element of the transformation: a space that could not be more different from what came before, and could not better capture what this renovation ultimately achieved.
Architecture & Interiors: FOLAR Architecture & Interiors | folararchitecture.com.au | @folar_architecture
Builder: Pagewood Projects
Photography: Mitchell Kemp
