The feeling that I wanted to create here was
a private retreat for the owners. A place where they could work,
entertain, relax with friends and family and really have this little hidden gem just for them.
My name is Carla Middleton and I'm the director of Carla Middleton Architecture and I was the
project architect on House Bondi. The site is located in Bondi Beach which is also known as
Boondi by the local Gadigal people. The site resides in a local suburban area on a cul-de-sac.
So as we enter the space, you open the door to a nice wide hallway that steps down and on the left
is a beautiful big rumpus room and then you come down some stairs and it splits off
two ways to kind of accentuate that diagonal and then it pops you out to an
open kitchen, living and dining space. As you move up the stairs,
we have a total of three bedrooms and two bathrooms and lots of storage.
I'm Andrew Severino, I'm from M&G Building. I'm a company director and I'm also one of the
project managers. With this particular project, Carla contacted me and said she had something
interesting that she wanted to build, where she had a vision. She asked me to come and
have a look at the drawings and to see if it was something I was interested in building
and one of the features of this home which attracted us to it was the project's floor
plan. It had a zigzag or a sawtooth pattern so the home was not a straightforward home to build.
There was quite a bit of geometry that we have to work with to get the home right,
had to be very precise, so the zigzag design made a real interesting project to construct.
So the concept was originally conceived through a rigorous analysis of the client's brief
and a response to the long sight and the length of the site facing north. I thought,
okay well as I pull in from the north along the side and as the zigzag protrudes into the space,
I can place the garden and then as the triangle pushes out, I can place that room
and what I'm conceptually quite interested in is the dynamic space
of how those two spaces interact with each other and so with the slope of the site,
I wanted to step down the spaces as it comes down towards the rear of the site.
The room and garden concept has come from a personal interest of mine.
I think psychologically, I have an intention for the inhabitants of the spaces that I design
to be happy. Mind you, you know we're not happy all the time, so I'm
cognizant of people having a flat day or feeling like they need to retreat in a space
but I think overall, our aim is to create happy spaces for our clients.
One of the key finishes on the outside was the external plaster or the external render. The type
of finish we use there is an older, traditional type of plaster that hasn't been used for a long
time and is now being reinvented on modern homes. It's called a pebble dash and it's a beautiful way
to finish a home. Andrew has a great understanding of structure and form and how to achieve
the vision that I have and we can have some great conversations about them.
You know for example, the textured render he put up three samples on a wall, put scaffolding
down so we could check the natural light and how that interacted with the textured render.
He really has an invested interest on the outcome of the project.
Some of the other key materials that were specified for this home were the oak. There's
an extensive amount of oak throughout the home. We've used a European oak on the floor. We've
built the timber staircase and all the ballasts on the staircase out of solid European oak.
Another great feature of the home is the tiling. Various selections
have been made in three different bathrooms, but probably my favourite bathroom is the
main bathroom upstairs. There's a unique tile up there; it's a chevron pattern
and when done correctly it really makes the space look special.
I'm most proud of this project in the way that I had a concept and quite a unique concept and
the concept has remained true and pure to its original form. Typically during
the process of architecture, these concepts can get diluted through council controls,
clients brief, client budgets and buildability
and so I'm most proud of the concept remaining true and original to my vision.