In 2024 we completed a heritage renovation in Richmond: a graded Victorian in a Heritage Overlay, taken through the City of Yarra's permit process and delivered. In 2025 another Yarra project followed in Princes Hill. We can be this matter-of-fact about Richmond because it is next door: our studio sits one suburb away on Wellington Street, Collingwood, inside the same council, and Yarra's planning counter at Richmond Town Hall is a place we actually stand in.
Single-fronted and double-fronted workers' housing from the 1870s onward makes up much of Richmond's grain; the craft is winning light and storage from narrow plans without touching what the street values.
Where party walls, laneways and overlooking rules mean millimetres decide what the neighbours and the council will accept.
Richmond's industrial past, from the Bryant & May match factory to the Maltings silos under the Nylex sign, left a stock of robust shells; converting industrial buildings into homes and workplaces is a specialty the practice has honed across Melbourne's inner suburbs.
On subdivided ex-industrial land near Swan and Church streets.
For graded properties, covered in the approvals section.
Setbacks, overlooking, party walls and laneway access shape Richmond projects at least as often as heritage does, and a design that respects them from sketch one saves months of negotiation.
Individually significant, contributory or not contributory: the grading, not the age, sets what can change, and even “not contributory” buildings inside a precinct need permits for most works.
A small number of properties carry internal alteration controls, reaching interior works. We check yours before anything else.
Yarra offers complimentary pre-application advice, and for smaller projects a planner gives verbal advice at Richmond Town Hall on Bridge Road, no appointment needed. We use both channels early and arrive with drawings that make the conversation short.
Victoria's 60-statutory-day clock stops while information requests and referrals are resolved; we build programs around the true duration and say so up front.
A narrow house that suddenly has light where it matters. A shell with industrial bones and a working life ahead of it. A rear addition the street never suspects and the household never stops using. A permit strategy built on knowing how this council actually reads drawings. And first, always, a feasibility session that prices the ambition honestly against the property, before commitment, not after.
Fees are fixed and agreed before design work starts.
The council's Heritage Overlay guidance for owners.
The council's complimentary pre-application channel.
Check whether a property is heritage listed.