Fur-babies. Travel. Colour. Fun.
Do I have your attention?
If that ticked some mental boxes for you, you'll love Casa de Gatos (or 'House of Cats' in Spanish). It's a home designed for a couple, their two dogs and two cats. Forget the average cat scratching post - this house has an entire wall for scratching! Because when you're designing a home for people with pets, it's important to make sure every member of the family is comfortable in their new digs...
On a tiny double-fronted site in Fitzroy North, this renovation was certainly a challenge for architects WOWOWA. With a Victorian workers' cottage at the front and a DIY modernist '70s reno at the back, the original home was a "visual language fiesta" Monique Woodward from WOWOWA jokes.
The new home is still a fiesta, but it feels a lot more cohesive and practical now! The project added a new bathroom pod and a new kitchen into the existing envelope. Along with some reconfiguration of the existing rooms, the home is now more flexible and functional for the clients and their fur-family.
With a love of travel, the clients weren't afraid to translate their sense of adventure into a vibrant palette of Mexican-inspired terracotta and aqua. The orange cat scratching wall is the primary burst of colour in the living area. Combined with the timber ceilings and floors, the home feels fresh and clean.
A cat super-highway runs throughout the house, allowing the two feline family members to command the highest spot in the house and look down upon their minions.
The colour scheme is carried through into the bathroom where aqua tiles with terracotta grout make for a zesty start to the day.
With internal clerestory windows, spaces like the new bathroom pod can borrow light from adjacent rooms. Combined with skylights, a clerestory window where the workers' cottage and the '70s addition meet and a new bank of sliding doors onto the courtyard, the home feels remarkably light for such a tight site.
Monique talks about the project's "liveability and lovability". We couldn't agree more. Casa de Gatos is fun and functional for the whole family - human, canine and feline alike.
