2020 City Beach House

Architecture Team: Simon Pendal, Valerie Schönjahn and Callum Spurge

Builder: Rossbrook Construction, Interior: Ohlo Studio, Structural: Forth Consulting, Landscape: Carrier and Postmus, Estimator: Rebecca Hunn, Photographer: Rob Frith

An existing 1960’s modernist house has been given new life. The entire house and property was stripped-back (to walls and floors only) and repaired, restored and re-imagined. Our clients should be applauded for their decision to retain this modest dwelling as many similar houses within City Beach have been demolished at great loss to the suburb which has become ‘perpetually new’. Simon Pendal Architect was commissioned to address the building envelope, outdoor living and hard landscapes. Ohlo Studio was commissioned to complete the interior. Carrier and Postmus created a new garden from boundary-to-boundary.

We sought to honour the original house but leave it utterly transformed within those limits, making it responsive to its place in the sand-dunes. A pale yellow concrete path runs from the street, through the house, out to the rear garden and terminates in a white steel ‘garden rotunda’. Along this pathway, carefully made elements in white steel - handrails, fine columns, balustrades - have been placed giving a sense of fragility in contrast to the mass of the house and the yellow concrete. The termination of this pathway - the garden rotunda - glistens in the sun and provides a setting for being outside. Within the rotunda a plinth in rustic white brickwork and pale grey concrete holds an external kitchen. The rotunda’s ceiling is lemon-yellow polished plaster with a velvet sheen. Here, an external curtain can be drawn around to change the levels of privacy and temper the brightness of the sun - providing a staged backdrop to outdoor life. The house is repainted in bright white. New timber windows and doors were exhaustively designed to compliment the original house, catch the breeze and collect shadows in their surfaces. The pale material palette was chosen so that it would appear bleached-out by the sun. Collectively these carefully designed sequence of experiences, details and colours make us think of David Hockney’s ‘L.A. pool series’ of paintings - an affiliation made early in the design process which has now come to life.