Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects

Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects is a Western Australian architecture practice. Its Lunchbox project, Glen Forrest House + Church, is a new home built beside the first church in the Mundaring region, just outside Perth.

The owners asked for a house for less than $400,000, which the architects said could only be achieved if they were trusted with cost decisions and worked with one builder. Open workshops with the engineer and builder "resulted in the impossible being possible." The new home reinterprets the brick and corrugated iron of the 1903 church, with brick walls rising from the ground to hide a garage and workshop, and a verandah of grey polycarbonate and recycled jarrah battens – "the slick and the hairy" – linking house, church and gazebo. Kept separate, the church needed only minimal change.

See Glen Forrest House + Church on Lunchbox below.

This is the Trick to Adapting a Church for Modern Living

Old churches can be a challenge to transform into a home. There's the need to balance history and practicality. This is how you do it.