“Our brief was to create a family home,” says John Bornas, design director of Workroom. “A real home. An oasis from the outside world that connects interior and exterior.” And the result? Kooyong Residence – an inner-city Melbourne home – that truly reimagines the shape and experience of urban living today.

As a site of calmness and retreat, the design of Kooyong Residence provides the conditions for a balanced lifestyle with intimate connection to the one thing that inner-city living often has in short supply: nature. “Large open spaces,” says Bornas, “allow for the togetherness of family but also provide a secluded sense of space and refuge.” With a spatial layout that deliberately blurs the divides between internal living areas and the lush exterior gardens, further nods to nature exist throughout the home’s various touches of biophilia.

Whether through generous use of raw, organic materials such as stone, or even the array of timbers used across furnishings, flooring and panelling in this five-bedroom home, Bornas and the Workroom design team evidently placed the residents’ health first and foremost in the design process. To further enhance the sense of holistic wellbeing, Workroom selected Zip Water’s HydroTap Miniboil to engender better hydration at the convenience of a fingertip for everyone in the family – proving once again that leading residential environments need to embrace design that is not only good, but good for you.