Somer's is on the Mornington Peninsula it's located on Bunurong Country and
our site has the great luxury of being right on the beachfront
Something that was really important to our clients and also to us is sustainability and
the sustainability of this house particularly. The house needed to be fully accessible a very
very important part of the brief and also how they can really enjoy the proximity
to the beach so they had a lot of experience living here they knew it was a windy place at
times they knew they wanted to sit in here and feel protected and watch storms come.
I think the house is very responsive to the change of seasons it's able to open up when the weather's
good and it can be closed down while maintaining the views when when it gets a bit ropey
this house is fairly private from the urban realm but there are glimpses of it from the
beach and also from the street what we wanted to do with that was to make make the house feel
like something very enticing or secret or interesting and we do that by presenting
a facade which doesn't reveal too much about what's going on behind it.
The large shallow arch which forms the cave for the cars to come into
we like to use these abstracted highly composed facades which have these sort of
slightly difficult to define zoomorphic qualities because it engages with your
imagination and doesn't tell you about what's happening inside but makes you want to know.
Huge part of the design for this house was making accessibility easy but virtually
invisible so there is obviously a great requirement for accessibility access through
three levels so wheelchair access but also the bathrooms had to have a real level of comfort
We
love working with Amanda Oliver on our projects she's a really
long-term collaborator she understands lots about plants and she does some
very special unusual combinations of plants and she continues to look after the garden
this house we were gifted a beautiful beautiful gum tree that sits between the
house and the view so it feels really close so that's not Amanda but what the
site gave us so to really build on that native coastal landscape
We worked very closely on detail in this house our clients were very interested in
what could be achieved in building crafts so up close you'll see it's very specific
and beautiful detailing on the fireplaces in terms of the concrete and the steel
also with timber and the stone and with brass detailing.
I think the thing I'm most proud of with this project is that it feels like a very complete
realization of an idea every part of it feels like it's connected to each other
feels like all the design decisions have come from a very clear place
When you're in the comfort of this main space and it's very quiet because of all of the
special things that help it be quiet and then you open those doors back and you hear the sea,
the sea comes straight into the space you go from quiet to just hearing the sea.