FMD Architects Sinks a Melbourne Family House into Its Slope Beneath a Garden Inspired by Babylon

Most suburban houses on a sloping lot do one of two things: they flatten the ground with a retaining wall, or they perch on top of it and look out. Babylonia Residence, designed by FMD Architects under lead architect Fiona Dunin, takes a third route. The 928 m² house sits in Melbourne's established north-east and is pressed into its slope, so the elevated rear garden reads as something the house carries rather than something it faces. The name comes from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the reference shapes the plan as well as the branding.

What interests us is how far the architects push the idea of a sunken sanctuary within a suspended landscape. You enter low, through a kitchen and bar, under a glass skylight topped with a shallow pond. Daylight reaches the rooms below after it has passed through water. Around that move, the house layers concrete, dark timber, green stone and black mosaic into a sequence of rooms that open and close, with garden design by Eckersley Garden Architecture holding everything together. It is a lavish house, but most of its decisions follow from one idea about ground and enclosure.

A House That Reads as Terrain

From the garden, the house does not look like a single building. Dark timber-clad volumes with curved rooflines step down behind a concrete planter, and stepping stones lead toward the pool. The curves soften the roof edges until they read more like the lip of a landform than the eave of a house. At dusk the glazed living rooms glow under those curved edges, and the effect is closer to a lit cave mouth than a lit window.

Two mature eucalypts anchor the street frontage, and FMD frames them rather than working around them. Slim steel columns and a concrete wall set up a screen in front of the curved glazed pavilions, so the trees become part of the facade composition. On a street of established houses, it is a sensible way to add a large program without the house reading as a single block.

Arrival Through Concrete and Curved Timber

The entry sequence sets up the material language early. Granite steps rise between a board-marked concrete wall and a curved black timber wall, so you pass between something cast and heavy and something wrapped and soft. Inside, the stair is housed in its own board-marked concrete volume, cut with an arched opening and fitted with timber treads above a terrazzo floor.

The best threshold moment comes under a mosaic-clad canopy with an oval skylight, looking across a long table toward the garden and the glazed rear wing. Here the idea of layered thresholds becomes concrete: you stand under a cut in a heavy roof and look out to a lighter part of the house, with planting in between. Compression first, then release. The house repeats this move throughout.

Kitchen and Bar Under a Pond

Entering through the kitchen and bar is an unusual decision, and we think it is the right one for this household. It treats the house as a place for hosting first. The island is clad in vertical timber fluting with a stone top and stands against a veined green stone splashback and a perforated brick wall. Nearby, a marble-topped bar with a mirrored bottle shelf sits under a timber arch.

The pond-topped skylight is the detail that gives this zone its character. It casts rippled light across the stone and timber, so the surfaces change through the day and with the weather above. That is the hanging garden idea at its most literal and most effective: water is suspended overhead, and you see it through the light it lets in.

Dining Built for Long Nights

Past the kitchen and bar is a large dining space sized for dinner parties. The double-height volume uses board-marked concrete walls with timber shelving, and the scale is earned, since this is the room the brief seems to centre on. A curved banquette sits under a tall timber-panelled wall, and sunlight moves across the cast concrete in long streaks that show off the board texture.

The smaller timber-panelled dining nook, with a leather banquette and a large painting, gives the house a second table at a more intimate scale. Its mirrored bar picks up the concrete arch nearby. Pairing the large and small dining rooms tells you the architects planned for both a twelve-person dinner and a quiet Tuesday.

Rooms for Play and Performance

The dining area opens onto a games room through a swinging panel and a sliding door. It is a simple piece of joinery engineering, and it lets the space work as an adult entertaining room one night and a children's games room the next morning. A slatted timber ceiling, a built-in banquette and a red pool table set the tone, and a mirrored bar appears through a curved opening.

The lounge goes further, with olive curved sofas, timber and black wall panels, floating oval ceiling baffles and a drum kit. The baffles suggest the acoustics were taken seriously rather than added later. The powder room keeps up the intensity: dark gold-veined stone, a black basin on a curved stone shelf and arched timber doors. Few houses give a powder room this much attention, and in a house built for guests it is a reasonable place to spend.

Water as a Building Material

Water appears at almost every level of the house, and FMD uses it as an architectural element rather than an amenity. The living room opens through floor-to-ceiling glass to a plunge pool, under a curved timber ceiling and beside a perforated brick wall. A sunken bathing pool lined in terracotta tile sits under a slatted timber ceiling, with a skylight laying daylight across the room.

The bathroom with the freestanding oval tub takes the idea outdoors. Steel-framed glazing opens onto a sunlit courtyard with a pool, so bathing becomes a courtyard activity. Combined with the pond over the entry, these rooms suggest a house organised around descending into cool, shaded water while the garden sits above. That is a credible response to a Melbourne summer, even though we could not verify any formal passive design strategy.

Private Rooms Lined in Timber

Upstairs, the palette narrows and the rooms become close and enclosing. A bedroom lined in timber has a curved ceiling, a round window and a built-in window seat beside a tall glazed door. The study nook frames eucalyptus branches through a curved black window frame, so the street trees that anchor the facade also become the view from the desk.

The dressing nook has an arched timber ceiling, a round mirror and a green marble vanity edge meeting dark mosaic. These are small rooms, and FMD treats them like joinery pieces you can walk into. The repeated curves keep the timber from feeling like a box and tie the private spaces back to the curved rooflines outside.

Wet Rooms in Stone and Mosaic

The bathrooms show the most saturated version of the material palette. A curved black mosaic wall rises behind a white tub, with timber panelling and a round mirror catching afternoon sun. Twin black basins sit in green veined marble against dark mosaic. A curved green marble wall-hung basin stands against terrazzo and green vertical tile under a globe lamp.

The risk is obvious: this many stones and tiles could become a showroom. It mostly holds together because the curves stay consistent and the colours stay within dark green, black and warm timber. The cavernous, embedded quality the architects describe comes through most strongly in these rooms, which feel carved rather than fitted out.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan explains the strategy. The house footprint sits along a long rectangular lot, with the pool, pergola and a curved outbuilding set among circular tree canopies. The section shows the stacked levels cut into the ground, with curved walls, a central stair and arched openings at basement level. The elevations repeat the curved parapets and the single round window that recurs inside.

The floor plans show how much program the slope absorbs. The basement holds a large garage with a car lift, a gym, sauna, games room, lounge, cellar and a pool lounge, which is a lot of building to keep out of sight. The ground floor gathers family room, kitchen, dining, lounge and a bedroom suite around the outdoor pool, spa and pergola. The first floor runs bedrooms, ensuites and a study along a corridor above two voids and roof terraces.

Why This Project Matters

Large suburban houses usually look large. Babylonia shows another approach: put the bulk of a 928 m² program into the ground, give the visible volumes curved, landform-like edges, and let a raised garden take the visual weight. The basement plan in particular shows how a demanding brief, with garage lift, gym, sauna and cellar, can disappear under a site rather than spread across it. Other architects working on sloping lots with ambitious clients should take note.

The project also shows that a strong concept can carry a dense material palette. The pond skylight, the descent toward water and the layered thresholds all serve the same idea of a sheltered interior beneath a suspended landscape. You may find the finishes more than you would choose, but the house is coherent, and in high-budget residential work that coherence is rarer than the budget itself.

Babylonia Residence by FMD Architects (lead architect Fiona Dunin), Melbourne, Australia. Area: 928 m². Completed: 2026. Garden and landscape design: Eckersley Garden Architecture. Photography: Peter Bennetts.

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