A Coastal House That Gives Nothing Away

It's what we didn't do that actually speaks the loudest. I find that quite fascinating. I think the facade makes one of the biggest statements on the street by doing less. Instead of this big rendered box with cantilevered shrouds and copper this and corten that, it's just landscape and a floating plane, but it's still quite dramatic. In berming up that landscaping, it creates a lovely private home that allows for everything to happen behind that berm. We're really quite close to a beautiful beach and Mornington is a beautiful little seaside town. You show up and there's these gravel tracks and it's not exactly what you'd expect when you're in such a, call it an aspirational area as this. This kind of laid back Australian authenticity in a way. It was a nice site with some established gum trees on it, charming low-lying neighbors, nice outlook with maybe a slight challenge of having north to the street. That was something we had to encounter and deal with. It does feel coastal. Even though you don't see the water from here, you have a pretty clear sense just from the feel of the air, the landscape, the existing architectural languages that you encounter that you're in this kind of coastal hamlet. In the most literal terms, this house is simply passing through a landscaped berm underneath a floating plane to reveal a lifted or floating roof at the end. It's a simple idea but the sequence of those three elements is actually quite powerful. It's legible but you experience it as you kind of move through it. If you walk by it, even though it's not doing a heck of a lot, I think it would invite a lot of people to pause and contemplate what is going on there. This house features a very tried and true sequence that architects have been using for generations, compressing that entry, drawing you in, and then revealing an expanse. So you go through this spatial transformation so that it heightens that awareness of you passing through. You've got this idea of refuge and protection that's created by this bermed up landscape up against these concrete walls that basically conceal almost all of the house from the street. You're sandwiched between these two wider concrete walls. They're separated a bit more and it starts to open up and then you turn the corner and you're into the kitchen living dining and the house is fully revealed. The contrast of the scale of the relatively compact entry against the impressive scale of the kitchen living dining with its raked ceilings and scillion roof, clear story lighting, that contrast is heightened through that sequential design. The clients came to us with a brief that asked us to incorporate concrete into the building and that did help drive this retention idea, this berming idea. And when you are using these elemental materials, it is incumbent on the builder to really think everything through, how it's going to be protected and erected. And CABSAV did an excellent job just coming through and executing to an incredibly high level and something that we're always appreciative of. You'd have a conventional response and a temptation would be there as well where you have north of the street that maybe you try to put some living spaces up there and that would have been, I think, a valid design response. There's nothing wrong with that. But the approach taken here was to connect the living area to the pool and the yard and put the primary bedroom facing the street. The strategy in the raised roof, we have north to the street and so the raised roof is bringing in clear story lighting. We have lighting coming in from the north and the east predominantly. Got these expressed tensioning rods up on the clear story windows that become quite a feature. But it's that way of bringing light into the space where we're on a south-facing block and so there is the spatial impact but there's also the daylighting intention as well. If we had living at the front and then you pass through and you got a second living at the back, it'd be a more static experience as you move through the house. You wouldn't get that contrast that we were seeking and it's still light-filled. You're not missing out on anything by not facing the entire house to the north and creating a protected northern courtyard from the street. There were other ways that we were able to solve that challenge and it creates these lovely moments. So by brimming that landscape, we were able to create an internal courtyard to the primary ensuite. We've got this beautiful glass wall that sits behind us fully joinery. There's tree ferns and tractor seat plants and you get to go into your shower and have full privacy even though it's facing the street and look out on this private garden. Landscaping is completely integral to this project. Obviously bringing it into the architecture, having it even be the architecture in some ways at the front facade, it was important to get a really good design and we had COS Landscaping do a great job. It's the way in which the landscaping kind of creates these outdoor rooms and so you've got a little courtyard outside the ensuite. You've got a courtyard outside the master bedroom. You've got a courtyard at the rear. You've got a courtyard off of the second lounge. Each of these spaces serve as outdoor rooms and the way that they've integrated Australian flora is paramount. It's a beautiful contrast as well. Like when you've got this highly architectural home with hard lines, concrete, glass and steel, you need the softness of the landscape to counteract that. I think when the simplicity of a concept is easily understood, it's more powerful. The simplicity of this house in terms of these three elements, this landscape, this horizontal floating plane and this lifted roof, the legibility of that creates the power and so keeping it simple in that regard creates that engagement, creates that legibility. It intrigues. It strikes up a curiosity I think in people who might pass by but then they'd have no idea from the street that you have this raked ceiling. You can't see it. The angle of the roof of the living area was chosen from across the street so that you can intentionally disappear. You don't see the solar panels on it. You don't see the cowls and so that kind of denial and reward, another tried and true concept, is something I think that lends its power here. You have this nondescript or discrete facade that gives little away and then this building that kind of exists behind it and you have to move through the building to understand it, to even begin to contemplate what it's about.