KGB House

Engaged early in the process, the interior was crafted alongside the architectural response as a close client collaboration. Interpreting the nuances of this unique home, and the distinctive endeavours the owners had planned in how the home would function, custom responses and an underlying flexibility to planning was formed. The core challenge of KGH House lay in ensuring the vast scale of the home was not overwhelming with less people in residence.

Living active lives themselves, the intention was for the home to ultimately house multigenerational living. In layering in nods to comfort and familiarity, while also allowing for supported movement, the interior flowing features both an internal lift and a sloping ramped floor. Located along the coast, the structure of the home is both distinct and iconic, firmly weighted in place through concrete.

With this same robust finish left untreated internally in many cases, interventions through the interior needed to align with a similar sense of resilience. Wanting to ensure a comfort throughout the year as well as emphasise the notion of enclosure, a traditional internal ceiling height allows the home to accommodate the stacked levels within council requirements, while burrowing into the terrain below, emphasising an intimacy within.

Response from "Charles Wright Architects"....Everything we do in our practice is put through a performance filter - the client brief required long life cycle efficiency as an inter-generational resort style beach house. With its location on the absolute beachfront with salt spray all materials needed to be low maintenance and robust. We engineered an encased and shaded concrete structure with highly insulated thermal mass. The passive performance of the house in this regard was key in all decision making - directly reducing power consumption via a constant ambient internal temperature year round. Beach erosion combined with future projected cyclone activity as a result of climate change also directly informed the engineering and sustainability measures. Extensive water harvesting for recycling, solar power generation, complement the passive performance initiatives.Due to the sensitive siting of the project directly on the beachfront there were extensive ecological requirements to be handled carefully. The engineered concrete structure required significant advanced geo-technical and marine environmental advice for permits and approvals in relation to Acid Sulphate Soils, Salinity etc. - it literally acts as an extensive and deep built seawall to protect the site from ongoing beach erosion. All stormwater is captured and disbursed - harvested into large rainwater tanks where appropriate for recycling - all lightening the load to local government and public infrastructure. The beachfront required a landscaped reserve area to maintain the seaward 'A' Line where any structures are readily removable.

The scope and complexity of the project required the design team in conjunction with the builder to provide cost options throughout the entire procurement process in order to deliver on the client's requirements whilst confirming best value for money.
We had a select multi-disciplinary consultant team of leading professionals in their respective fields - all aspects of the project were put through an engineered filter of performance for life cycle efficiency, sustainability and comfort.

The site is adjacent to the local beachfront public reserve and Dune restoration area seperated by significant canopy trees along the adjoining boundary line. The built form is well setback from the main Wilson Street esplanade and is low-set to a maximum height of 8.5m in line with the exisiting neighbouring properties and local planning regulations. The project brief was extensive and adherance to local planning requirements directly informed the resultant design - we were happy that the building's apparent typology became ambiguous..

As the heart of the home in the truest sense on this occasion, the kitchen combines familiar elements of a residential setting amongst a commercial arrangement. Having spent significant time in industrious kitchens, the owner integrated similar methodologies, defining the space as being led by function.
Wrapped in bronzed brass together with an extensive use of Dekton throughout, the elemental forms that comprise the space sit sculpturally within the home.

While the concrete formwork acts as a tectonic response to the surrounds and climate, the interior responds to these geometries through a balanced and softening lens. Bringing a combination of layered and textured elements together within the spaces, in most cases, electing to use outdoor fabrics for an ingrained durability. In the planned longevity for the home, finishes needed to ensure a strength against the elements, and in some cases was distressed intentionally to encourage the reaction to the environment.