Brisbane's identity lives in its housing: timber character homes on stumps, post-war suburbs on ridgelines, contemporary houses negotiating floodplains and sloping blocks. Residential architects in Brisbane work inside that inheritance every day, and it is the work Invilla Architecture was built for. From Morningside, we design custom homes, major renovations and residential developments across the city and South East Queensland.
Three Kinds of Residential Work
The work is broader than a single project type, and Invilla runs across its full width.
New custom homes are where our convictions show most clearly. Jacaranda House won Master Builders Queensland House of the Year in 2023, shaped by the belief that the climate should shape the architecture: elevation, shade, ventilation and light doing the work they've always done in this city. Illalangi followed, taking the Master Builder’s Gold Coast President's Award in 2025.
Major renovations and extensions run right through the portfolio because most of the city's best sites already have a house on them, often a protected one. From pre-war character homes to post-war transformations, the brief is the same: design the house's next fifty years without losing the reasons it was loved in the first place. Beachcrest House in Wellington Point and Clare House in Auchenflower show how differently that can resolve.
Residential developments extend the same design thinking to more than one dwelling: projects where the quality of the architecture makes a development genuinely belong to and add to its street. It's a growing side of the work, carried with the same whole-project approach as the homes, as our residential development at Sunshine Beach shows.
Designed for This City's Blocks
What makes designing homes here its own discipline isn't style; it's the ground. The Traditional building character overlay protects pre-1946 homes. Flood overlays set floor levels. Sloping sites punish flat-block thinking, and the subtropical climate rewards houses built to breathe: the same logic the original Queenslanders understood and the best contemporary homes extend, as our Queenslander extension work shows. Nine years of working these overlays and streets is Invilla's quiet advantage.
How We Work
One team carries each project from first conversation to completion through our architectural design service: site and planning assessment, concept design, approvals, documentation and support through construction. Fees are fixed, agreed before we start, and scoped to the whole project.
Common Questions
What does a residential architect do? A residential architect designs homes and carries them through to reality: assessing the site and its planning controls, designing the spaces, documenting the project for approval and construction, and overseeing quality as it's built. In Brisbane that routinely includes character overlays, flood overlays and sloping sites, which is why local planning fluency matters as much as design ability.
Who are Invilla Architecture? Invilla Architecture is architect-led and based in Morningside, Brisbane. Michael Johnston and Joseph Verrills are the directors, and the work spans custom homes, major renovations, substantial extensions and residential developments, including Master Builders Queensland's House of the Year 2023.
Where do Invilla Architecture work? Invilla works across Brisbane's inner and middle suburbs, including Hawthorne, Bulimba, Ascot and Camp Hill, with projects on the Sunshine Coast and selected work further across South East Queensland.
What projects does Invilla take on? Substantial residential projects: new custom homes, complete renovations, raise-and-build-under transformations, major extensions and residential developments, with particular depth in Brisbane's character and Queenslander housing. Invilla takes on a limited number of projects at a time.
Start With Your Project
Whether it's a new home, the transformation of a house you already love, or a development that deserves real architecture, it starts the same way. Get your project estimate, or get in touch and tell us about the site.
