Breathe undertakes meaningful projects we can be proud of — those that align with our purpose and values.
Since we focus on maximising positive impact, many of our projects don’t fit the common definition of ‘architecture’.
We work to understand who we’re designing for. We strive to inspire, engage and support our clients and the broader communities we serve.
We prioritise social, environmental and economic sustainability in every project. We question the status quo to pursue outcomes that are informed by, and seek to better, those that came before.
Above all, we prioritise ethics along with aesthetics, and design without ego, to create the best outcomes for our clients and their communities.
We use design as a weapon for good, and a tool to build a better future.
We design built environments from a holistic, sustainable perspective: each project reconciles ecological and social impacts within the current economic climate.
Breathe are change agents, advocating for the people in the cities where we live and work. We create spaces that are meaningful and accessible to everyone.
Architects Declare (founding signatory)
Certified B Corp
Certified Carbon Neutral in operation (since 2018)
AIA Member
Respecting the past. Reframing the present.
Tucked into the bushland edge of Merri Creek in Northcote, this home has always been a bit of a prototype. Originally designed in 1990 by Goad Fink and later extended by Fink & McMahon, the house was handcrafted by its original owner, Ian Ezard, who pioneered tongue-and-groove timber flooring from a nearby warehouse workshop. The steel frame? He built it himself, using a forklift.
Fast forward to today, and our role at Breathe was to gently retrofit this much-loved home — no new floor area, just a more comfortable, efficient, and artful version of itself.
Working closely with a family of four who share a deep appreciation for modernist design, we focused on improving thermal performance, rationalising interior spaces, and creating more gallery-like wall space for their growing art collection. Inspired by the house’s original palette of timber and red-painted steel, and artworks by Michael and George Johnson, we added careful colour, stainless steel, and local hardwood.
A new space-efficient kitchen now tucks neatly under the stair, bathrooms have been rethought with honesty and restraint, and the oversized main bedroom was reimagined as a sequence of spaces — for sleeping, dressing and bathing — with a shoji screen shielding a timber tub that looks out to the creek.
In collaboration with Sam Cox, a natural pool and landscape ties it all back to place.
We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which Merri Creek House stands. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.
Sitting on the steep banks of Edgars Creek, this house is raw and elemental. It is simple and honest in its approach to siting and planning.
The home is broken down into three elements/three pavilions. One for sleeping, one for bathing, one for living. They frame a central courtyard, and they frame the view to the west through a tall stand of Ironbark trees, and onto the meandering creek beyond. Each pavilion is connected to the landscape, to the view, to the creek.
The materiality of the house responds to its bushland context. A rammed earth wall shields the south of the house, and talks to the sandstone cliffs of the creek below. The pavilions sit among the Ironbark trees and are clad in raw Ironbark themselves.
Edgars Creek House is all about a connection to nature. This home is about the country and the landscape in which it exists, and offers a way to live as part of that system rather than trying to preside over it.
We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which Edgars Creek House stands. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.
