Located in a leafy coastal site, the existing house turned its back on a large north-facing garden. Home to a family with three young boys, the project brief included a race-track and native forest in the rear garden, and a home where the kids could drag the outside inside and always have sticky fingers. The house was to be relaxed as a beach house, but flexible for many different uses and stages of family life.
The existing house was largely retained, with a linking passage extending from the old house into the garden. The new addition sits at the end of this, forming a sheltered deck space between the old and new. Sliding glazed doors draw the deck inside, to be used as an extended living space in summer. The addition allows flexibility in the use of spaces, with sliding doors creating zones, and ties to the garden and outdoors from all rooms of the house. The family can inhabit the house in many different ways now and as children grow up.
A dining area separates the two wings of the addition, with a combined kitchen and living, and kids bedroom wing on the west. The social areas are ‘carved-out’ of one fluid space, made distinct by grey hand-painted ceilings, step-downs and sliding doors. Large steps lead down from the dining to a sheltered patio, carefully preserved camellia tree and the garden beyond. The edge of the house forms the fringe of the garden, to be inhabited by the family and gently infiltrated by the garden.