Establishing a strong connection to the surrounding environment was essential to creating a sense of escape and sanctuary. The house’s dramatic position—nestled between the cliff and the sea—profoundly shaped the architectural response. The early stages of the project were marked by conflicting challenges, including geotechnical instability, bushfire risk, and the demands of both council and client. The completed home stands as a testament to the innovation and problem-solving required to navigate the complexities of such a unique site.

A hybrid of both stable and the light-weight structure was used to achieve resistance to land movement. Extensive concrete piers and anchors support a rigid steel raft which frames the house while maintaining an elegant timber form. The steep roofline creates a direct relationship between the towering scale of the forest and the human scale of the front-of-house area.

Internally, the planning is linear, and filled with a diverse palette of timbers, including ironbark floorboards, hoop pine plywood wall panels and rosewood door and window frames—which together create an unmistakable feeling of warmth. A variety of generous openings and colourful operable shutters ferry breezes into internal living spaces, creating a sense of flow and energy between spaces and diminishing the indoor-outdoor barrier between home and forest.

The end result is a private, lively and thoroughly inhabitable and secluded family home which owes much of its success to the relationship it evokes between architecture and landscape.