I like the sense of calm that you feel when you walk into the house.
It's not busy, it's not loud, it's not contrived either, it's very relaxed.
So for me, that idea of of shutting the rest of the
world away for a little while is something that I appreciate.
The project's located on Belongil Beach, Byron Bay part of Arakwal Country, it's a
coastal beachside town, known for its surf culture and relaxed atmosphere,
the project itself is situated right at Belongil Beach, it's perched on a dune
hugging a literal rainforest that falls straight into the beach.
Byron Bay is a really special place, it's a unique place,
it's very relaxed, there's never any real urgency to anything,
the clients wanted the house to reflect that but at the same time have a sense of refinement.
They wanted the house to be connected to the environment but also, protected from it so it
was a real play between what to allow in and what to not allow in using the landscape as a backdrop
was something that was paramount right from the very beginning.
So from the street
the house is concealed by a series of screens
the idea is to try and create a sense of wonder, you don't really know what's going on behind
that screen, once you get through the gate we still have a substantial walk to the front door,
the idea here was to allow you to experience the landscape that
this house is set in, it's not just simply walking into a front door.
Once you get to the door you enter into the main living and dining areas.
These areas are bounded by the pavilions that open up to the dunes and the rainforest but
this area isn't just a living area, it's actually acting as a distributor for the rest of the house.
One of the really nice things about creating a
house that's made up of a series of parts or series of pavilions,
is that it allows you to frame specific views in between them, so everywhere that
you turn when you're in the house, there's always a glimpse of the outside, sometimes
it's a broad and wide view but other times it's a very controlled and very
specific view, it allows us to once again use the landscape as an element
of the house, without the landscape the house would be a very different house.
This particular site offers a lot of opportunities but also comes with a
lot of constraints, the coastal erosion along this stretch of coastline is quite evident
and part of the regulatory requirements is that the house needs to be demountable,
so you could imagine there being a lot of constraints particularly in sort of
dimensional qualities, because the house needs to fit on the back of a truck, those
constraints we saw as opportunities because as the house is designed as
a series of pavilions that can be removed, we were able to then use all the negative
spaces in between as the spaces that actually really gave life to the house.
The other constraint on the site is this amazing literal rainforest, it is an amazing backdrop and
it's an incredible element to the whole design however, we needed to be very sensitive because
the environment is very sensitive so, the floor level of the house sits about 1.6 m above natural
ground level, this allowed us to get closer to the trees without disturbing the root systems
but also creating a sense that the house is floating amongst the trees of the rainforest.
The material palette for the project is really a response to the environment,
particularly from the outside but also inside because a lot of the time the
house is open, we used porcelain, we have timber and we've got stone.
The porcelain was about longevity, the timber is about you know showing the
age and the stone is more about providing that sense of groundedness to the building.
I think when a building ages gracefully and well it actually adds another layer to the building,
it is another design element.
For us we want our buildings to not be frozen in time we want them
to change and age but we don't want them to age in a way that's detrimental to the building.
The fact that the building's in a landscape that is so lush and alive, it changes over time as well
so the idea that the building also changes as time goes by is really important to us.
Our studios approach focuses on a sense of wonder and awareness through having a really rigorous
understanding of form, space, material and we approach each commission as a kind of unfolding of
a three-dimensional language that tells the story of the house and the family that lives in it.
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