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My name is Jorge Hrdina, I'm the architect for Gunnamatta House.
Gunnamatta House is located south of Sydney CBD on the bay side of Cronulla.
The original brief is really for a very much a family home connected to the exterior and
connected to what's what's most amazing about this place and that is the waterfront location.
What I like to do often in buildings is create this sense of journey where the people coming
to the house to experience the building obviously there's an anticipation that they will get to the
view but I like to hold that into a bit of suspense and so the journey is not about oh
when will I get to the view but rather it's just a sequence of events contains a passive eye in
that space. So, the entry itself is a contained space then articulating the next level which is
the kitchen space and the courtyard, the indoor outdoor between the kitchen and courtyard becomes
another whole space. Of course there are now glimpses of the water and the main game
is to then come down another series of steps to living-dining and it's absolutely stunning view.
If there's a disconnection between outside and inside via large number of staircases,
the result can be often apartment-like living. The
way that I've resolved that was to introduce a series of comfortable
split levels and creating indoor-outdoor spaces at each one of those platform levels.
With family living and particularly families with young kids, I have an idea that parents should be
able to supervise their kids from inside the kitchen space and often that's not the case
on a steep block and so the way we've resolved that here is to lower the living room levels
and then we raise the garden and the pool level as high as possible so
rather than creating full stories, raising gardens and lowering
internal spaces and one achieves a maximum connection between inside and outside.
Often on waterfronts the aspect towards the water is not north and where there is a constraint of
houses quite close by, that challenge was solved by
the introduction of a courtyard and almost a quasi, I would say, two pavilion design
where north light can then filter right through the guts of the building.
That same principle is reintroduced on the first level where we have another quasi courtyard space
and it's called the gallery which allows all that north light in the middle of the building.
The clients heritage is always really important, in this case Troy was the
local to the area and was born and brought up in this area and knew it intimately well.
His wife on the other hand is from Spain. Although climatically quite similar in a way the culture
is is really interesting and that is quite colourful and a lot of history
and so that European aspect especially the Spanish aspect did come through in the design a lot.
The Spanish have got such a an architectural
flamboyancy about them. They're colourful, quite bombastic sometimes in personality they're not,
they don't take a step backwards and that that's come through in the materiality such as the stone,
the off form concrete, timber, we use rattan and many parts of the joinery and then also
in the in the use of of the stones and the marbles, they're quite strong in many ways,
but that certainly is uh reflective of of the client's cultural backgrounds in my opinion.
With the sandstone we've used that material a lot it's a fabulous product that comes
from the locality in Sydney. The way that the sandstone is proportioned and hand cut so that it
notches in with other proportion of stones is very very important.
It goes to create a an everlasting artwork in many respects.
For an architect I think there's many layers of coming to a conclusion in a project.
It's not just the physicality of a beautiful building and the craftsmanship that goes into it,
it's how good architecture has the capacity to really enhance people's lives.
A home should be an anchor and a sanctuary. The most fantastic
thing here is that I've had clients that said to me Jorge, it's now really home.
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