Chan Architecture built a single-level residence in Kew, Victoria where the BMW race car collection isn't stored away, it's framed in the home office window, visible from the courtyard, woven into daily life.
ARCHITECTURE
Campbell St House: Vintage BMW Rally Car Workshop
Architect: Chan Architecture
Project Location: Kew, Victoria, Australia
Photographer: Tatjana Plitt
There's an office in this house with a floor-to-ceiling window. It doesn't look out to the garden or the street. It looks into the workshop. From the desk, you can see a BMW in full Warsteiner racing livery (blue, white, red, number 46) sitting exactly where you left it.
Chan Architecture built Campbell St House in Kew, a Melbourne suburb, for a client with a lifelong obsession with BMW vintage rally and touring cars. The brief was direct: the workshop comes first. Everything else (living room, kitchen, master bedroom) would arrange itself around that.
The result is a 353-square-metre single-level home that treats the car collection not as something to park and ignore, but as the organizing principle of the whole project. It's one of the more resolved examples of architect-designed car garages we've come across.
From the Street, Nothing Gives It Away
From Campbell Street, the house is quiet. A handcrafted brick wall runs the length of the block. Behind it, the roofline angles sharply toward the east, a modern form that reads as restrained and considered rather than showy. The garage door is dark and flush with the facade. Nothing announces what's behind it.
That restraint is deliberate. Chan Architecture designed the exterior to sit respectfully alongside the Victorian-era homes on either side. The materials (exposed steel, concrete-lined walls, timber battens) are resolved and specific without drawing attention to themselves.
The Courtyard That Connects Everything
Step through the front entry and the plan opens up. The living and kitchen areas connect to an internal courtyard through stacker sliding doors. It's the social core of the house, and it sits directly opposite the workshop opening.
When the workshop door is up, the BMWs are right there. Two people can sit in the alfresco chairs, the dachshund at their feet, and have a direct line of sight to the collection. It's not accidental. The courtyard is positioned to make the workshop part of everyday life rather than something that exists separately from it. The Garage Terrace House in Japan used a similar logic, designing a combined garage and courtyard at the center of the home.
Inside the Four-Car BMW Vintage Rally Workshop
The car workshop sits at the rear of the site and is designed for serious use. Four car bays, two vehicle hoists, clear circulation throughout. The cathedral ceiling (vaulted with a central skylight) gives the space a volume that feels more like a dedicated racing facility than a domestic garage. The floor is immaculate white.
Inside, it's all business and all personality. The walls are covered floor to ceiling in racing posters and memorabilia. A Nürburgring circuit map. Framed photographs. Reference books stacked along the shelves. A stainless tool chest sits mid-floor. A workbench runs along one wall. These cars get worked on.
The BMW Vintage Rally Car Collection
The BMWs are vintage rally and touring cars in full period racing livery. The most striking is the #46 Warsteiner car (white bodywork with the iconic blue, red, and BMW Motorsport stripe set, exactly as it would have appeared on circuit). A second BMW in green rally livery sits alongside it. The floor plan holds four cars in total, with the hoists positioned for proper access.
These aren't show pieces. The workshop exists to keep them running, restore them properly, and treat them with the seriousness they deserve. It's the same conviction behind other Australian architects designing seriously around car collections.
Where the House Lives Up to the Workshop
While for us garage and auto enthusiasts, the workshop is the hero, the interiors are far from an afterthought in this home.
Dark-stained timber walls, natural marble stone, neutral tones throughout. The house is finished with the same level of intention as the cars it houses.
The kitchen island is a single dramatic slab of heavily veined marble. The angled ceiling in the main living space creates a volume that mirrors, in spirit, the vaulted workshop next door.
The home office earns its own mention. Positioned between the main house and the workshop, with a large picture-frame window looking directly into the car bay, it's the room where the line between daily life and obsession disappears entirely. The same thinking sits behind a home built in Boston, where the office was designed with a direct sightline to the garage and collection.
That window is the move. Not a feature. A statement about what this house is actually for.
ARCHITECT
