The front
garden room is definitely my favourite part of the house the quality of the dappled light that
comes down through the void space above, the way that it manages to handle the combination
of both private public agenda it challenges the traditional entry sequence into a house
and it's just a beautiful space to be in and around.
I'm Justin Humphrey director of Justin Humphrey Architects
and I was the project architect on Cove House.
Sanctuary Cove is a gated community located on the northern edge of the Gold Coast the community's
got a strong connection to water it's flanked on one side by the Coomera river which runs out next
to us here on side all the way out towards South Stradbroke Island and out towards Morton Bay.
The site we're on today is on the lands of both the Yugambeh and the Kombumerri people.
The clients for this project had travelled extensively and they had
developed an interest and appreciation for sub-tropical modern architecture
they saw an opportunity to bring the climate-responsive nature of this
sort of architecture back to their site here in the Sanctuary Cove.
The form of the house I guess is quite strong, it's materiality with the concrete some of the
dark tones really needed to be offset and that's where the perfect material to marry
it up with was the warmth in the timber and also one of the elements of the brief for this
project originally was that the house needed to be the equal parts building and garden.
The main organising element in the house would be the singular strong floating roof plane and the
articulation the way we've stopped both concrete and timber battens short allowing that roof plane
to float over and it really does make sense of a lot of the elements that are going on beneath it.
The entry into the house was something that we really wanted to spend some time on so the
concrete wall sort of wraps around from the front of the house and actually guides you
through rather than having a hard edge and a traditional front door to the street we wanted
to soften that with a finely detailed timber batten screen at the front which
brings you into the first room of the house which is actually an external garden room.
You've also got basically straight down the middle at the start of what is the green landscape spine
of the house which separates the public entry from the private access to the bedrooms externally.
The concrete wall then continues to lead you from the front door down past the internal courtyard
into the main living spaces these then flow seamlessly to the outdoor spaces and then down
on towards what was affectionately known as 'The Passion Pit' and down towards the pool beyond.
My name is Tracey Morland and I'm the owner of this beautiful property
we're right on the water which is great because we love boating and we have a beautiful natural
reserve opposite us called Kumura Island and it really feels like we have no neighbours
whatsoever it's just very peaceful and quiet and nobody's staring in at us.
The house responds very well to the natural l ight we have the internal courtyards which
as the day moves the sun bounces off a lot of the concrete walls and also the timber
I love that we utilise it for breezes so we can have the wind coming through the home and
it's a very very cool home we also wanted to be able to entertain which we do quite a lot so the
house actually just opens up completely and the outdoors becomes the indoors and it becomes quite
a fabulous space to entertain. It just works it's just such a beautiful home to live in.
Passive design principles of the house were really critical to get
to get the large roof span provides wide eaves lots of protection from rain deep
shade in summer which helps obviously with the curated breeze pathways working
through the house that allows us to reduce our reliance on artificial cooling during summer.
The natural stone floor and the concrete was employed the thermal mass of those
elements to really capture that lower northern sun build up heat and you know
once again to further regulate the temperatures all year round.
The master bedroom was something that predominantly with two people in the
house during the week that was going to be one of the main spaces that they were in.
Daily bathing rituals was something that were part of the brief originally and so
we basically decided to lift up the level of the master ensuite
to I guess create a bit of drama and celebrate that daily sequence of events.
I've thoroughly enjoyed actually seeing the clients grow into the house and seeing
the house age and I really also hope this house does effectively put down a marker
for an alternative way to approach the same planning conditions in creating a
house that far better addresses its natural climatic setting.