projects > residential > palm beach house
The site fronts a harbour beach on Pittwater in Sydney's northern Beaches and has it's entry and garages on a quiet Palm Beach street. The front, facing the beach is oriented south west, directly into the south westerly weather fronts that have a significant run up across the expanse of Pittwater. The outlook across Pittwater is to National Park.
The brief was to convert three apartments in two existing buildings into one family house that included a private area for the adults and a work space to allow them to work from home. Two fundamental spatial requirements were to activate a private outdoor courtyard room, enclosed by the two existing buildings on the site, and to protect the inhabitants from the view of people using the beach the house directly fronts.
The architecture has been expressed as a series of finely crafted, space making furniture pieces that have been inserted into and grafted onto the fabric of the existing building. The window boxes in the living room and bedrooms puncture the envelope of the brick skin and create a new seat or table whilst providing protection from the sun and wind. The windows slide over the external elevation so that they disappear when viewed from the inside. The solid timber window reveals have been carefully placed to frame the views across the water to the National Park. The new sunroom and north western wall that contains the staircase have been wrapped around the brick mass. The north western wall uses a stack effect to passively cool the rest of the house.
Photography by Kilian O'Sullivan