Surfside House

Surfside House is situated within a varied streetscape of semi-detached dwellings and apartment buildings tucked just below the Clovelly ridgeline. Our initial brief was to modify the existing 1930s semi to create an expanded ground level living area, with an upper level housing two new bedrooms, creating a three bedroom house with study. We reconsidered the convention and arrived at a solution that instead lifted the living areas, opening them to expansive views. To do this, the house was conceived as an extension of the characteristic stepped climb up from Clovelly beach, positioning the program across a series of platforms gradually climbing out of the containment of coastal banksia vegetation, positioning the living platforms above the tree line with striking views back to Clovelly's rock platforms, the ocean, and the horizon south and east.

Generative in the initial brief development was a detailed massing study of DA vs. CDC controls applied to the site, which revealed substantially different possibilities for the house according to which approval process was followed. The massing of the upper level extrapolated from the CDC controls allowed for a larger and substantially better sited upper level form, and on the basis of this opportunity, an unconventional resolution of the brief was proposed: with a compact living area on a new upper level and three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a laundry, and a study arranged in a re-configured lower level.

Key to this concept was the design of the stair as both the pivotal organising element of the plan and an element that provides connections to landscape and outlook. On the ground level the stair is central in the creation of a compact pin wheel plan, creating a light filled ‘public’ area with a clearly legible path to the upper level living area, that minimises corridors in the organisation of rooms developed around the stair.