How This Architect Redefined the Australian Beach House

First impressions arriving at the site was just turning off the main road onto a dirt road and the immediate sense of wanting to kick the shoes off and put the thongs on and the boardies on and it's amazing how that just immediately settles you into the idea of you're at the beach and how do we bring that same dirt road relaxation and weave that into the design. Mount Marthur is a quiet coastal town an hour south of Melbourne. We have a quite nice village it's a very relaxed feel. What first drew me to this site was the sheer size being over one acre there was a great opportunity to develop something really unique and special. The key brief that Christian gave us at the commencement of these four homes and right up to completing the honey house was that they were speculative homes they were to be sold and we wanted to create something that was unique and different to perhaps some of the cookie cutter design and build homes that you might see in the area. The site was acquired as a speculative project so the brief from the get-go was to create something that would reach the broader market. We wanted to make sure the home was going to be suitable for them now and into the future and ensuring that it was luxurious and it was somewhere that they enjoyed being. We didn't necessarily have an external view of water or parkland so pretty quickly we resolved that this was going to be a courtyard style house. The idea of a spine through the middle of the house to connect to the front and the back and off of that spine are the secondary bedrooms and living areas. The suite at the front of the house which could be for guests. The pop-top roof and the steel framed shroud that captures that or shades the window is both a really nice arrival point and allows the facade and streetscape to be enjoyed but equally internally just that sense of volume the light the view to the tree canopy. We've got the dining and the kitchen areas located to the rear of the site where there's really wonderful sense of privacy. It's a beach house that kitchen living dining is focused around and able to connect out into the courtyard that receives really great sun throughout the day. What makes a Mount Martha beach house? There's no one defining feature but we spent some time walking and driving the surrounding streets and the weatherboards and the concrete blocks were pulled from surrounding homes that we observed. Often you may see beach houses where this idea of whites and sense of brightness for us it was more about dialing that back and trying to create this sense of warmth through lots of neutral tones and textures. The idea when you walk through the front door whether that's after a long day at work or you've come back from the beach is calmness and through the use of materials. Material might have been used 30, 40 or 50 years ago in a Mount Martha beach house but reinterpreted for 2025 and beyond. The crazy paving, the use of the timber lining particularly in the main kitchen living area and the guest suite, the natural stone benchtops and I think when we look around the spaces that sense of texture calmness is hopefully pretty evident. The typical speculative home is built economically and for profit essentially but my passion for architecture and quality homes really drew me down the path of delivering something that was really unique and special. The space has a beautiful calming feeling and everyone that walks through is overwhelmed. The role of the landscape was very important in the final outcome. We want the user to experience and certainly from internal spaces to enjoy views to the landscape so Bethany Williamson worked on all four homes. Her brief and the requirement was to balance what's appropriate in the Mount Martha context in terms of plants and feeling and how do we create a landscape that is commensurate with the what is ultimately a speculative home that has to be built for a budget to be able to be sold. When you come over the crossover and you walk to the front door you're walking across loose gravel that immediate crunch of the gravel reminds you that you're not in an urban environment and then just the little glimpses as you move through the home into the garden whether it's the crushed rock or the granitic sand ground covers and the pops of greenery that just bring a sense of calmness. There's a few moments in the honey house that remind me why I love being an architect. Often hallways can just be considered as ways to link between key spaces but the hallway and the spine here is a space in itself and it's a place you're happy to pause and stop and enjoy and the concrete block blades which are there to actually shade the afternoon western sun incidentally the shadow play that that creates really really beautiful at different times of the year. Going into that higher detail architectural is the time it takes to get things right and I was conscious of not departing from the intent. To build detail takes time and it costs money and you have to go through that process of juggling whether it's worthwhile following through or scaling some things back to remain on budget. It's been quite some years and I think the outcome has exceeded that even. We'll look back on the seven years working with Christian and the Ongarelo team really really fondly and really appreciative of the effort he's gone to to ensure the design intent that started on a bit of yellow trace has followed through into the four homes and I think what's often forgotten in architecture is it's always about the outcome it's always about the finished product in the process which is a lot of blood sweat and tears can be forgotten or glossed over but there was very few tears and this is as much a celebration of the process as it is the outcome.