One of the main objectives of the design was to really maximise the physical and
visual connection to the beach, really feels like the Pacific Ocean is your front yard.
I'm Geraldine Maher, I'm the founder of Maher Design and
I was the Principal Designer for the Mermaid Beach House.
The house is located in Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast,
it's on the land of the peoples of the Yugambeh language region, the house was built in the
mid-80s and the original interior was very much in the Gold Coast style at the time.
The brief was originally just to do a more cosmetic makeover but as we looked more closely
at the original house, it became obvious to us that it could really benefit from more substantial
works, we wanted to strip everything back and simplify the interior to make it quite textural
and beautiful but also to make it sort of easy to live in and low maintenance and functional.
One of the best features of the original house was a beautiful terracotta roof,
so we selected terracotta as the floor plane to really tie everything together,
it has that textured feel so you can literally walk in off the sand onto the terracotta,
it doesn't matter if your feet are a bit sandy, it just really facilitates
that relaxed lifestyle and it has a warmth that contributes to the overall comfort of the home.
The clients are Gold Coast natives and they have a very outdoors lifestyle,
they can go to the beach every day, they can walk directly into the living space off the
sand dunes and the space really facilitates that kind of easy-going attitude. So you
enter the house through a big wide pivot door and into the entry area, we designed a wall of
beautiful breeze blocks designed by Adam Goodrum to define the entry space and create a sense of
arrival. To the left there's the living, dining room and behind those rooms are the kitchen.
Relocating the kitchen to the rear of the space, it maximised the view from the dining area and
the living space but it also created an issue of storage, so we created a long eight meter
bench that contains a number of the kitchen functions, those physical and dimensional
constraints really kind of forced us to shoehorn a kitchen into a very tight space. The thing that
drove the selection of the Fisher & Paykel was the design and aesthetic aligning with sort of
great functionality and really high quality product. Being able to integrate the fridge
and freezer allows us to be really creative with how we design the kitchen. One of the key features
of the space is the bar which is an area at the front that looks directly out over the beach. One
of the great things about the cool drawer, is it enabled me to design the joinery on a
terracotta plinth and still be lifted up off the ground so it doesn't look like kitchen joinery.
Being able to integrate the Fisher & Paykel products really suits the client's lifestyle.
So directly off the living space there is a beautiful outdoor terrace which has a beautiful
louvered pergola, so you can sit around in the pool of a winter evening around the open fire and
enjoy the sound of the waves. On the upper levels are all of the main bedrooms and some guest rooms.
Off the main bedroom there's an ensuite which we really wanted to feel like a retreat, there's also
a magnificent bath right at the window so you can be sitting in the bath and you almost feel like
you're at the beach. The marine environment really takes no prisoners when it comes to materials,
we used materials that are really robust and can tolerate the marine environment. We also use a
beautiful terracotta louvers for the balustrades, these were fantastic because they are very
resilient to the salt spray, we really wanted to try and still maintain a view through but also get
an element of privacy. I think one of the outcomes that I love the most is that a really warm family
home has been created and it's not precious at all, it's robust, it's functional, it's got a lot
of texture and warmth that's really comfortable to be in and the people who live here love it.