Within a magical home set against an ever-changing backdrop of the ocean, it is clear that Macmasters Beach House is a family home that allows its owners to live peacefully alongside nature. Nestled in the headlands, there is a wild Australian character that is evident throughout the design of the home. Embracing the idea of barefoot luxury within a magical home, Polly Harbison Design has imbued the coastal home with simple principles while providing the owners with a home where they can experience the incredible views.
With solid and open concrete and exposed eaves, the design and architecture of the beach house allows the materials to speak for themselves. Furthermore, the remaining bush surrounding the house has been carefully enhanced and considered, keeping the footprint of the house as small as possible while still providing plenty of space for the family inside. Polly Harbison Design has also retained much of the landscaping to encourage the existing vegetation on the property to regenerate.
Once inside the magical home, a tour of the home reveals the deep connection between natural and man-made elements. Journeying up a cantilevered concrete staircase surrounded by a green wall, the tour of the home reveals a stone paved deck that wraps around the home and provides a variety of outdoor areas for the family to enjoy and relax.
The open plan living and dining rooms within the magical home are equally proportioned, giving the residence a warm and welcoming feel. Through careful balance between architecture and landscape, the architect encourages the surrounding natural landscape and the greenery of the garden to become part of the home itself. Upstairs, the rooms are purposefully smaller, with large windows facing the sea. Downstairs, the children’s room is designed to look substantial as it opens onto the spacious lawn outside. With its well proportioned proportions, Macmasters Beach House strikes a clear balance between providing for the family and appearing as a modest structure while still enjoying the simple life.
00:00 - Introducing the Magic House 00:45 - Beautiful coastal location and its core principles 01:25 - Guide to the house 02:59 - Focus on indoor-outdoor connection 03:25 - Completing the project and its finishing touches 04:14 - Protecting the surrounding bushland 04:45 - Proud moments Photography by Derek Swalwell. Architecture by Polly Harbison Design. Built by Paterson Builders. Styling by Room on Fire. Landscape by Michael Cooke Garden Design. Engineering by Tihanyi Consulting Engineers. Joinery by Fine Earth Joinery. Timber doors by Bakers Joinery. Filming and editing by Emble Studio. Produced by Local Projects.
Location: Macmasters Beach, New South Wales, Australia
The Local Project acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Owners of land in Australia. We recognise the importance of First Nations peoples to our country’s identity and continued connection to Country and community. We pay respect to Elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations peoples of these lands.
The fantastic experience of being in this house
is that constant changing drama of nature.
And when you're this close to the beach,
actually perched up against the sand,
nestled into the headland,
that wildness of the Australian coastal landscape
is 100% experienced in this house.
I'm Polly Harbison from Polly Harbison Design,
and I'm the architect for this project at McMaster's Beach.
The house is located on a beautiful coastal site
overlooking McMaster's Beach on Dakingjung Country.
McMaster's is a really small, sleepy coastal town
a couple of hours north of Sydney.
A core principle in our projects and work
is this idea of barefoot luxury.
Everything in this house was designed
to go back to those core principles
of how can we do it simply?
How can we do it in a really relaxed beach atmosphere?
And again, so fortunate to have builders and craftspeople
that could really make that a reality.
So now, when you arrive on the site,
you go up a cantilevered concrete step
and a green wall that acts as a bit of a barrier
to the rest of the world and the privacy of the home.
You come up the stairs
and enter onto this stone-tiled platform
that really wraps around the house,
creating different external areas,
each with their own microclimate.
And the living, kitchen, dining space itself
is a room that's very carefully proportioned,
that when it actually opens up
and all the doors are slid back,
really acts almost as a veranda.
This open-plan kitchen, living, dining space,
they're really the heart of this home,
carefully balances the beauty of the ocean
with the beauty of greenery and the garden.
When you go upstairs to the more adult world,
I guess, again, we use that trick of sometimes smaller
can actually be better.
There are two bedrooms up there
and neither of them are particularly large,
but they have very large and generous windows
and you can be lying in bed
and you actually feel as if you are in that ocean.
The kind of proportion of the room
to the proportion of ocean is quite dramatic.
So the kids' bedrooms and area downstairs is really robust.
The beauty of it comes from this large, generous lawn
that the rooms open up onto
so that the kids really could spill out from inside
and play out on the lawn
and then wander down to the beach.
That sequence of coming up from the beach,
you can enter into that downstairs breezeway area.
It almost feels a bit indoor-outdoor
with its big sliding timber screen door and timber decking.
It makes that kind of breezeway space
a really kind of practical, functional entry to a beach house.
My name's Tim Patterson
and I was the site supervisor on this project.
The buildability of Polly's designs,
from a builder's point of view, amazing.
She just lets the materials speak for themselves, basically.
With a project like this,
a lot of the structure being the finished product,
there was no room to hide.
Everything had to be, I guess, spot-on,
otherwise you would see it in the finished product.
So the project called for a lot of off-form concrete.
The board form finishes to the ceiling
and the exposed eaves were a challenging
but very rewarding process to go through.
We salvaged some timber during demolition.
As much as we could,
we tried to bring some of the old house into the new.
So small shelves, study desk up in the main bedroom,
and wherever we could, basically, we tried to bring in use.
When I first saw the site,
the characteristic that really we wanted to enhance
and treat very preciously was the remnant pocket of bush.
The way the building was conceived of and designed
was to keep the footprint as small as possible
so that we could retain
as much of the existing vegetation on the site
and indeed regenerate it.
Michael Cook, the landscaper,
was absolutely instrumental
in the success of this project
because the project is as much about the garden
as it is about the house.
The thing I'm most proud about this house
is that it's not too big and it's not too small.
It strikes that balance between accommodating the family
and providing them all the essentials that they need
to enjoy their holiday.
But it hasn't lost that idea of it being
an Australian beach shack, a simple, humble structure.
