tinbeerwah house

Our client’s brief was for a new family house on a steep noosa hinterland site with views out to the ocean.

The accessible part of the site had been cleared of vegetation by previous owners. The site had also been dramatically cut and filled without the necessary retaining and drainage to stabilise the ground. We felt there was a great opportunity to use the new house and landscape to stabilise and rehabilitate the land. We designed the new house to work with the existing cuts that had been made previously, utilising new retaining walls, drainage system and landscape to sure up and repair the ground.

The other challenge with ocean views to the east, is how to provide protection from the hot morning summer sun, while maintaining the outlook from the house. In its simplest form, the new house is designed as an operable glass pavilion that is wrapped in fine hardwood screens, so the owners can control the amount of direct sun coming in. In winter, they can slide open the screens to let the winter sun in to heat up the concrete floor. In summer mornings, they can have the screens closed to provide shade from direct sun, while still maintaining views and breezes through the timber battens.

With steep hinterland sites, it is easy for the house to end up high above the natural ground and lose your connection to the earth. With young children, the owners were eager to be able to step from the house directly into the garden. So, working with the existing levels we were able to configure the floor plan so that the kitchen, living, dining and children’s bedrooms opened directly onto garden spaces to make it easy for the kids to go outside and play.

The house is designed to collect its own solar power and rain water for use in the house. Then the waste water from bathrooms, kitchen and laundry is treated on site then used for irrigation and bush regeneration. There is a small orchard and terraced vegetable garden, completing it as a contemporary sustainable house.

The long thin rectangular plan is a design strategy that we have utilised on a number of our projects. Firstly, on a steep site running a long thin building along the contours allows us to minimise the amount of cut and fill. Secondly, it ensures the building is only one room deep to maximise cross ventilation and natural light for the interior spaces. Our design strategy is to provide the family with opportunities to come together to cook, eat and relax, but also more quiet spaces for reflective time. The long thin plan provides a horizontal separation of the public and private areas of the house. The kitchen, living and dining open onto the north-east garden and pool. The bedrooms are pushed to the more private southern end of the site, separated by bathrooms and robes.