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Architects: Wolveridge Architects
- Area: 475 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Derek Swalwell
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Manufacturers: Sky-Frame, Boyd Alternatives, ROGER SELLER, Rimex
Text description provided by the architects. This home, overlooking the fairways and surrounds of Sorrento Golf Club was designed for a couple planning to return to Australia after many years overseas. One of the clients grew up in an old Merchant Home on the site and holidayed there during childhood. Our response was to effectively create a luxury suite at the upper level, including an elevated garden and cantilevered pool. The home is constructed deep into the hillside with outstanding views of the golf course and beyond. We describe the architecture as a kind of sophisticated beach house which incorporates the kind of modern expectations, however, at a very basic level –this is a beach house, that incorporates cross ventilation pathways through it at both levels, with framed garden outlooks and a significant focus on the experience of natural light. Protected outdoor spaces are offered and emerging around the building is a landscape that extends the coastal dune flora typical of the area.
Whilst the setting represents the ideal coastal bush landscape, the scale of the site itself required a significant shift of material and earth. We elected to back the house into the hillside where a deep light well reflects light and encourages fresh air through both levels. A sense of opulence in finish has contributed to a sophisticated palette that lends an urban feel to the home, particularly its subterranean rooms, which are somewhat removed from the landscape. From the upper level platform, one looks out to the landscape below and beyond, however, with the associated elevated garden and pool provide a protected landscape experience reached simply via a stroll across the first floor platform.
We have tried to create a home that is strong and light, open and protective. Engaging with its surrounds at the discretion of its occupants. The landscape is an extension of the coastal and also golf landscape, that reaches right up to and envelopes the home. The use of timber externally as a primary material we felt was a further tool which, over time shall silver off encouraging the home to merge closer within its setting and as a way to reinforce the sense of this building being for the most part, a building that exists as part of its landscape and not just an object within it.
