The clients, two siblings with their families, had approached us after having already lodged a Building Application with Council. The site has the potential for excellent views of the Pacific Ocean. It is “landlocked”, ie accessible from the street only via a small driveway, and heavily overlooked, as well as dwarfed, by its neighbours. Although high above its Eastern neighbouring sites there was little of the view potential recognised in the design of the first DA. Becoming increasingly doubtful about that design we were asked to illustrate how we would develop the site.
Our solution employed the gentle rise of the site away from the ocean which we realised could be, with a few small design measures, enough to step the two residences by a whole floor. Instead of the original 'semi-detached' solution pursued by others, where each house had only a very narrow front to the eastern views and a very small garden, we separated the residences completely, locating one behind the other, with the rear residence raised by one floor.
The rear house's potential disadvantage of looking at the front house's back was more than offset by the advantage of having panoramic ocean views from the upper level, which was therefore assigned Kitchen and Living areas, as well as one bedroom. Part of the roof of the front, ie lower, house was in addition made accessible for the rear, ie higher, house as a landscaped terrace, accessible by a lightweight bridge, thus increasing the highly valuable ocean view living area enormously.
The bottom level of the rear house contains three bedrooms and a rumpus/play room, associated with the internal garden, between the two houses, and the pool.
The front house's living areas are on the lower floor, closely linked to the sizeable garden and pool.
The upper level contains four bedrooms and a common/rumpus area, with the Master Bedroom and said Rumpus area placed to enjoy the best views.
Large skylights sit over large void spaces, bringing in sunlight deep into both houses. All Rooms, private or common, are arranged around those respective voids, thus creating a feel of generosity unexpected for such relatively small houses.
Photos by Mark Syke.