Houzz Tours
Houzz Tour: Living in the Treetops in Freshwater
Discover how a new build sympathetic with the environment and dynamic family living can create a serene home that draws people together
Our homes shelter us, but they also influence how we live and how we feel. The key is finding or creating the home that gives us the most positive domestic experience for the life we lead.
For this treetop retreat in Freshwater on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, architect Matt Elkan created an environment to foster connections. “The house is fundamentally about engagement,” he says. Through its materials and layout it engages the family of four, the surrounding trees, the views and the local climate. The home is calm, too, Elkan adds. “It sits easily on its site without imposing,” he describes. “It is a subtle careful house.”
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Greg and Susan Williams, with their daughters (9 and 10)
Location: Freshwater, Sydney, New South Wales
Size: 200 square metres (3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms)
Year built: 2013
Photography by Simon Whitbread
For this treetop retreat in Freshwater on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, architect Matt Elkan created an environment to foster connections. “The house is fundamentally about engagement,” he says. Through its materials and layout it engages the family of four, the surrounding trees, the views and the local climate. The home is calm, too, Elkan adds. “It sits easily on its site without imposing,” he describes. “It is a subtle careful house.”
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Greg and Susan Williams, with their daughters (9 and 10)
Location: Freshwater, Sydney, New South Wales
Size: 200 square metres (3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms)
Year built: 2013
Photography by Simon Whitbread
About three kilometres from the beach, with the valley below and the trees around, Elkan and the Williamses liken the home to a tree house. The design “always seemed like the appropriate thing to do,” says Greg.
“We wanted the house to feel as much as possible as though you are living outside,” says Elkan. “Basically, it would be good if the house felt like luxurious camping all the time.”
“We wanted the house to feel as much as possible as though you are living outside,” says Elkan. “Basically, it would be good if the house felt like luxurious camping all the time.”
Inside there are clear delineations between living spaces. Communal areas are localised on the east side of the house; the bedrooms and bathrooms are on the west side. The architecture provides visual cues, too. “In this case, we also consciously tried to make the bedrooms and bathrooms compact, with relatively low ceilings, so that people are encouraged to get out of their bedrooms and come into the common spaces,” says Elkan.
The open living room encourages circulation of people, light and air. Louvred windows draw as much light and air in as possible. The house faces north, and ocean breezes blow in from the northeast. Elkan designed the roof overhang to shade the house during the summer and welcome in the sun in winter, when it’s lower in the sky.
With the exception of ceiling fans, there is no active cooling. “With Sydney’s temperate climate, it should be easy to design a house where most of the heating and cooling is passive,” says Greg. By using natural forces for climate control, the home remains open to the world.
They used low-emissivity glass on the windows and double glazing in many places, and they heavily insulated the building envelope to reduce the need for active heating. There’s a wood combustion stove for heating the living room and hydronic radiators throughout the house.
The open living room encourages circulation of people, light and air. Louvred windows draw as much light and air in as possible. The house faces north, and ocean breezes blow in from the northeast. Elkan designed the roof overhang to shade the house during the summer and welcome in the sun in winter, when it’s lower in the sky.
With the exception of ceiling fans, there is no active cooling. “With Sydney’s temperate climate, it should be easy to design a house where most of the heating and cooling is passive,” says Greg. By using natural forces for climate control, the home remains open to the world.
They used low-emissivity glass on the windows and double glazing in many places, and they heavily insulated the building envelope to reduce the need for active heating. There’s a wood combustion stove for heating the living room and hydronic radiators throughout the house.
The television recedes from daily life, enclosed within a small room off the main living space. “The separate TV room was intentionally about making sure that the living room did not become a shrine to the TV,” says Elkan. “The clients’ view is that TV should be something that is watched intentionally rather than something that is on in the background.”
Fireplace: Morso 7648; floors: blackbutt wood with a tung oil finish, 30 per cent gloss
Fireplace: Morso 7648; floors: blackbutt wood with a tung oil finish, 30 per cent gloss
“I was particularly impressed by the client’s desire to make sure that their daughters would be active participants in family life, and that the house should help to engineer this,” Elkan continues. Movable timber screens open to engage the TV room with the rest of the house.
The Williamses envisioned their home as being a gathering space for friends as well as family. “The capacity to hold big dinner parties was a big deal for us, coming from a house where we really couldn’t entertain anyone in comfort,” says Greg.
“Matt took great effort to include the girls in the design process,” Susan adds. “As a result, we all enjoy how we live here. We can have a house full of kids running around, and at the same time the adults can still have a conversation.”
Paul Gray, the home’s builder, built the dining table from Elkan’s design as a housewarming present to the family. He also made the light fixture above the dining table from an Aboriginal fish trap and copper pipes from the original house. All the other furniture in the house was sourced from Vampt Vintage Design.
“Matt took great effort to include the girls in the design process,” Susan adds. “As a result, we all enjoy how we live here. We can have a house full of kids running around, and at the same time the adults can still have a conversation.”
Paul Gray, the home’s builder, built the dining table from Elkan’s design as a housewarming present to the family. He also made the light fixture above the dining table from an Aboriginal fish trap and copper pipes from the original house. All the other furniture in the house was sourced from Vampt Vintage Design.
Off the dining room an open kitchen easily accommodates friends and family, bridging the two sides of the house as its central point. “We find that visitors to our house almost always end up in the dining room/kitchen area, almost as if it exerts a gravitational pull,” Greg says.
The benchtops are recycled blackbutt and stainless steel. The kitchen cupboards are southern blue gum veneer with a white polyurethane finish.
The benchtops are recycled blackbutt and stainless steel. The kitchen cupboards are southern blue gum veneer with a white polyurethane finish.
A home office adjoins the dining room. “Talking about how we might use the study was, for me, an important part of the early design discussions,” says Greg. They handled it similarly to the TV room. “It is a separate space where I can concentrate, but is also placed relatively centrally within the house, so that I don’t disappear from family life when I am working.”
Native angophora trees provide visual markers of the landscape at both ends of the home’s main axis.
Downstairs, a full basement includes a laundry, a playroom, a garage and storage space.
Rain cisterns are capable of holding 10,000 litres of water for the bathroom, laundry and garden.
The home’s colour came later in the design process. The owners picked a nearly black colour called ‘Monument’, which then “spread like a virus through the rest of the house,” says Greg. He immediately was drawn to the hue, which he describes as “deep charcoal with a hint of chocolate”. The contrast of the black and natural wood is striking.
Elkan says: “The main consideration was that black recedes into the landscape visually. If you look at a hillside with lots of houses, the ones that stand out are the light-coloured ones. The ones you don’t look at are the dark ones. Councils are trying to discourage the use of light colours for this reason and also because they reflect into neighbours’ houses.”
Elkan says: “The main consideration was that black recedes into the landscape visually. If you look at a hillside with lots of houses, the ones that stand out are the light-coloured ones. The ones you don’t look at are the dark ones. Councils are trying to discourage the use of light colours for this reason and also because they reflect into neighbours’ houses.”
The same colours used outside the house flow inside, and vice versa. “In Sydney, we try to live outside as much as possible for at least six months of the year, making spaces which flow easily from inside to outside a very important part of good design,” says Greg. It was also simpler to keep the colour scheme minimalist. There are really only three main colours used throughout the house: soft white, dark charcoal and natural wood. Art and furniture add other colours.
The Williams family, shown here, couldn’t be happier with their house. “I remember waking up on one of the first mornings we spent in the house to the dawn light filtering through our relatively translucent blinds, and enjoying the feeling of both simultaneously being enclosed and exposed to natural light,” says Greg.
Each room has beautiful light, which Greg says changes throughout the day. “Friends comment on how peaceful they feel when they visit,” he adds.
The family has discovered how easy living can be in a home that embraces their lifestyle. “Living in a well-designed, beautiful and functional space affects positively the way our family interacts and can be a positive influence on mood,” says Greg.
Each room has beautiful light, which Greg says changes throughout the day. “Friends comment on how peaceful they feel when they visit,” he adds.
The family has discovered how easy living can be in a home that embraces their lifestyle. “Living in a well-designed, beautiful and functional space affects positively the way our family interacts and can be a positive influence on mood,” says Greg.
“Our hope in building the new house was to create a place which not only served our needs, but was at least a little bit inspiring to live in, welcoming for guests and did justice to the site,” says homeowner Greg Williams.
Greg and Susan wanted a house that could accommodate their growing family, but they didn’t want to build something big just because they could. “The clients had relatively humble aspirations in terms of the size of the house, which allowed more of the budget for the house to be well detailed,” says Elkan. They used the original footings of the cottage to minimise the impact of construction. The elements beyond that were done through suspension.