Innholdsfortegnelse for Beach & Bayside Homes i Beach & Bayside Homes

Adesire to stay faithful to the experience of camping underscored every aspect of the design of this holiday home perched above one of Minjerribah’s – North Stradbroke Island’s – iconic coves, Cylinder Beach off the Brisbane coast. “The clients wanted to live there as if they were camping,” says architect Erhard Rathmayr of the three owners who were going to share use of the holiday home. “So that meant being close to nature and having a simplicity of experience.” The design cues came from the basic premise of a tent acting as shelter, as well as the layout of the local camping ground where many families hire three of the 6x6 metre-squared areas so they can have a sleeping tent, a kitchen tent, and a centre one for living, all…

On a sandy knoll above Manly Beach in New South Wales, the history of Australian Surf Lifesaving is embedded in the foundations of a heritage site circa 1890. At the sound of a bell, the local Sly brothers would drag their boat down the back lane of their two adjoining cottages to perform ocean rescues. Jo Gillies from Archisoul Architects gives context, “Women had those dreaded pantaloons and were probably drowning easily with all those clothes on, so they were going out and saving them.” These actions led to the official founding of Surf Lifesaving Australia. Over the century, the original timber clad homes were renovated multiple times independently of one another, until a double brief gave Jo the opportunity to consolidate two clients on opposite sides of the globe.…

When a design brief places the outdoor living space centre stage, the challenge becomes multi-fold: to ensure protection from the elements, retain privacy from the neighbours, offer engagement with the interiors and secure views wherever you can. Situated on the south-east Queensland coast, Pandanus House achieves this and so much more. Created as a “holiday home that may become a home in time”, says architect Dan Sparks, its design conceit relies heavily on working with, not against, the climate and the context of the site itself. “The driving force behind the planning was to create a big outdoor entertaining space that was protected from the south-easterly winds, the rain and the sun,” says Dan. “This resulted in a two-box set up, where you’ve got the living room box which runs…

While a love of sailing was the primary driving force behind the purchase of this Callala Bay block on the New South Wales South Coast, it was the parallelogram-shaped site that sloped towards the water and offered expansive views over the bay which informed much of the design. Layered onto this was the owner’s desire for a holiday home that could cater to a teenage family and drew inspiration from the minimal steel and glass designs of the Mid-Century Modern Case Study Houses of the 1950s by renowned American architects such as Pierre Koenig and Craig Ellwood. To honour the topography of this site, architect Michelle Orszaczky of Clayton Orszaczky Architecture designed a rectilinear house plan with a sliding format to fit perfectly with the block’s parallelogram shape. “We created…

When Rosa Douramanis of Biotope Architecture and Interiors was briefed by a professional couple with a love of the Australian landscape, a eucalyptus amphitheatre sloping down to a lake was the dream site, with the water mimicking a stage. On the outskirts of Hobart, Tasmania, the aspect facing north to Mt Wellington reinforced the awe of the natural setting. Having lived mostly in high density urban apartments around the world, the prospect of a Lake House offered the clients an immersive change of pace and refreshing of souls. Secluded and private, Rosa was drawn to a natural glade on the lake’s edge as the optimal positioning. The site required minimal clearing and the attraction of the “calming serenity” seemed an obvious choice. The concept design was driven by the clients’…

As with most renovations, it’s what you can’t change that makes a project challenging. But what architect Berit Barton of Pleysier Perkins didn’t expect to find when working on the revamp of a timber beach shack in Portsea on the Mornington Peninsula, was for the outdoor pizza oven to prove the biggest conundrum of all. “I’ve never researched pizza ovens so much before. There was a lot of YouTubing,” laughs Berit. “You can buy DIY kits but they didn’t work with the design we wanted, which was to be in keeping with the architecture.” But Berit’s research paid off. The result: a custom-made oven using arching bricks inspired by a Mediterranean aesthetic, where every measurement and material used – from the length of the flue to the interior lining –…

On his many quests for the perfect set of waves along the Great Ocean Road close to Lorne, Victoria, architect Josh Crosbie’s gaze was always drawn to a long, slender silhouette perched on the hill above the rugged coastline. Distinctive from the taller, boxier shaped houses surrounding it, he found the clean straight lines and strong horizontals of the mid-century home known as Trade Winds, utterly alluring. “I’d always ogled at it and regarded it as my favourite house on the whole of the surf coast even though I’d never been lucky enough to go inside it,” he explains. The elegant profile with its striking, unbroken mullions extending the length of the glass façade, set up a repetitious language with every second frame topped by a small awning window for…

On Great Mackerel Beach, north of Sydney, there’s a build that resembles a shell. With its back to the Ku-ring-gai National Park, a metal exterior protectively wraps the contents. In place of a mollusc appearing at the opening, what emerges through a glass lens is an expansive view. Designed by Rob Brown of Casey Brown Architects who has lived ‘four or five’ houses along for the past twenty years, Hart House was the chance for a local experiment. “It’s a little settlement from the 1930s that’s sort of remained in a time capsule, no roads, only boat access, limited development, a beautiful sandy beach facing northwest and bush surrounding the whole place. It’s pretty special,” he says in situ. This familiarity with the environment informed Rob’s design concept. The weather’s…

Maybe it’s an ‘S’ for superman, or an ‘S’ for simplicity but an ‘S’ shaped home is a stand-out above exclusive Wategos Beach in northern New South Wales. Designed by Sam Zaher of Zaher Architects, it was completed in 2015 for clients he describes as, “a couple who are very open minded and lovely”. The original house, built in the 1950s, had been their home from 2004 until a cyclonic wind took the roof off. Not surprisingly the brief given to Sam was, “I want a house that doesn’t leak and doesn’t blow in the wind.” It also had to be modern with a concrete floor. The site was small and oriented to the northeast and Sam’s response took in the harsh marine environment. With concrete as the prime ingredient,…

Few suburbs offer such all-encompassing natural beauty and diverse landscape as the leafy riverside suburb of Perth’s Mosman Park. So when an opportunity arose to design and build on a corner site with views west to the ocean and Rottnest island, south to Freemantle’s harbour port, and east to the river, over parkland and a golf course, architect and interior designer Meaghan White dived right in. “I wanted to create two amazing homes that captured the magnificence of the site’s hill-top location,” says Meaghan. Its unique natural setting as well as the suburb’s architectural heritage formed the basis of the designs both inside and out, from the materials and finishes to the homes’ ability to tune in to the elements. For Owston Hill embraces the past as much as it…

The thrill of geometry was the key to nailing this unprecedented architectural brief reveals Ray Dinh from Austin Maynard Architects. As project architect for the build at St Andrews Beach on the Bass Strait side of the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, establishing the orientation took time. One of the last properties before the landscape hits national parkland, a sloped, natural clearing in the rugged scrubland hinted at positioning. To the south lies the ocean with the prevailing winds blowing up from Antarctica and to the north and northeast sits the small coastal town of St. Andrews. “You had that inherent goal of wanting to orientate towards the view, which is south, then also wanting to orientate towards the sun which is in the north. And it was those competing considerations…

What do you do when the site purchased for a sea-change build is completely flat and empty of vegetation, where you can only hear the ocean but not see it? You create your own landscape around which the house is designed. The piece of land on which the Daybreak Residence now sits is part of a fifteen-year-old subdivision – once a sandmining area – at Casaurina Beach in Northern New South Wales. “It was a single block in a row of houses, facing onto a public by-path leading to the beach,” explains architect Paul Uhlmann. “You could say it was a little bit sterile. There was no tree or feature to bounce an idea off.” There wasn’t even an existing house. Instead of following traditional archetypal builds where the house…

While languishing on the beach at Venus Bay in Victoria during their summer holidays, a family of five from “New Zullund” met Antony Martin of MRTN Architects and his parallel family of five. The two families got chatting, as you do, and identified commonalities via a typical six degrees of separation conversation. Antony was also born in the land of puha and pohutukawa, but no, they weren’t related. A friendship ensued and he applied his shared cultural tapestry to his familiarity with the local landscape to design a fit-forpurpose bach (kiwi speak for holiday house) for his new clients. Venus Bay is a low-density, low-key community dotted with houses that are modest in personality, and the land purchased by the clients had been on the market for some time. It…

What have a cactus prick and a love of mid-century modern architecture got in common? They signify a first gig for architect PJ Deasy from Harley Graham Architects on a project in Ballina, New South Wales. Before starting a role at HGA, she was called in to meet a client with a parallel penchant for modernism. He delivered an exciting brief, but her mind was on her upcoming holiday to Modernism Week in Palm Springs, California - an annual immersion for cultists of mid-century art, design, fashion and architecture. On a house tour with her best design face on, she ran into a cactus. It stuck to her head. Bizarrely, her Ballina client and fellow modernist enthusiast, was behind her. “He was mortified looking at me,” she recalls, but his…

Resting on a clifftop overlooking Frederick Henry Bay on the South Arm peninsula in south-eastern Tasmania, the aptly named The Point is like a contemporary reimagining of an ancient rock shelter. With a history that spans thousands of years of habitation by the Nuenone indigenous people of the area and in more recent times colonial farmers, the 20-hectare site is rugged, raw and barren. Fully exposed to the elements, its vista overlooks a wellknown surf break and spans all the way out to the wild Southern Ocean. Architect, Stuart Tanner, recalls his first visit and how taken he was by the scene before him. “The Tasmanian light is very significant – it’s sharp, it’s clear, it’s penetrating and always changing,” he says. “I remember standing in that paddock in this…

The point where the sculptural cliffs of Deep Creek on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia descend to a craggy cove with a private sandy beach marked the spot for architect Max Pritchard and his client, the owner of a nearby sheep farm. Standing on the exclusive parcel of land recently purchased, nature did the talking. The outlook from the remote, rugged coastline is due south across the Backstairs Strait to Kangaroo Island and behind to the north, the Heysen Trail brushes past on its way up the Flinders Ranges. A large conservation park is tucked into the eastern aspect of the landscape enriched by wildlife, waterfalls and wildflowers. Taking these natural elements on board, the brief was to design a family retreat with sanctuary overtones. While wandering the site…

When Koichi Takada and Georgia Wilson of Koichi Takada Architects were assessing a site in Newport, Sydney, they didn’t want to leave. Standing on the water’s edge they bombarded the clients with questions to prolong their stay - “Is there anything else you want to ask us?” They had descended the site’s steep terrain through tree canopy to an expanse of sea and sky. The view and amazing acoustics took centre stage as if watching from within a Roman amphitheatre. Their brief was to create a ‘sanctuary’ with opportunities for entertaining family and friends, in line with a “Waterfront Retreat”. The starting point for the design concept was a series of cantilevered concrete platforms that followed the terrain and maximised living spaces with minimal disturbance to the site. Orientation was…

It may surprise many to know that prefabricated construction dates back centuries, with the first known account being in 1624 when a panelised wood house was shipped from England to Massachusetts. It’s had a chequered history thereafter with surges of production occurring in America in the early 1900s, when Sears, Roebuck and Co sold close to 100,000 ‘house kits’ via catalogue as part of their ‘Modern Homes’ program, and in Britain, when the government commissioned thousands of prefab homes to be built to combat the post-World War Two housing crisis. But it’s Sweden which, through its long-established tradition of designing and producing long-lasting and environmentally friendly modular homes, has influenced and led the prefabricated building industry in the twenty-first century. For more than 80 per cent of Swedish homes feature…

Wickham Point forms part of a headland in Caloundra, Queensland where there’s an overlay of dynamic forces. Norfolk Pines line the coastal fringe and shipping channels criss-cross close to shore. It’s a place of spiritual significance to the original indigenous people. This engagement with nature formed the backdrop of a renovation by Matt Kennedy of Arcke, tasked with reimagining a coastal home coined as Wickham Point House. Built in the early 1900s and renovated by esteemed architect James Birrell in 1969, his contribution to Australian architecture both in government and private practice warranted honouring. Purchased by Matt’s client in the late 1970s, he was asked to reinvigorate the home in 2015. He explains, “Working on a project where there had been a quality architect involved was very much about being…

Surely, it’s every architect’s dream to be handed a brief with only two design elements. When Fiona Dunin from FMD Architects was approached by the client holding a jar filled with sand and a rock, her first thought was, “brilliant”. A conceptual design for the site on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria had been prepared by Tony Hobba Architects, who passed the baton onto Fiona. The opportunity for her as a specialist in architectural detail and interiors, lay in blending the outdoor elements with the indoor, and she drew inspiration from the coastal landscape to inform her decision making. The site faced due south and was occupied by a dilapidated house that was soon demolished. The outlook to the ocean was exposed to notoriously strong winds, so planning the…

Adesire to recreate childhood memories of clambering up and over sand dunes on your way to the beach while embracing the suburb’s renowned wide street verges is what drew the owners to the original Marmion Street house in Cottesloe, Perth, Western Australia. It’s these two ideas which informed the design and material choice for the new house they wished to build. “People are drawn to something bigger than themselves and the ocean offers that,” says architect Philip Stejskal of Philip Stejskal Architecture. “The owners wanted to create a home that was like a holiday house. As you walk from the street across the verge up the slope of the site, it’s as if you’re meandering your way up a sand dune to the beach.” Situated on the leeward side of…