Wildcoast House, Melbourne Home, Australian Real Estate Project, Victoria Architecture Images
Wildcoast House in Melbourne
21 July 2020
Wildcoast House
Design: Rachcoff Vella Architecture
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Within a deep recessive void an oversized timber door opens to present a soft, welcoming underbelly of winter beach tones and a sense of calm. Wildcoast offers refuge, a place of timeless well-crafted interiors and select fine furniture beautifully set against the wind-swept sand dunes and evocative coastal landscape.
Wildcoast is a new dwelling situated on the sand dunes on a Melbourne back beach. Inspired by the evocative coast line its materials and forms are inspired by its immediate context. Bunkered in; Wildcoast aims to protect from prevailing conditions whilst offering platforms to embrace its immediate and broader dynamic context.
The client brief was to provide an escape from busy life, a holiday home in a well known and loved place that encourages family to connect and create lifelong memories. Their love of the seasonal variation on the local back beach was the inspiration in materials and colour selection.
The challenge became to design internal spaces that could manage this variation whilst offering connected internal and external spaces protected from the elements.
During early design iterations a decision was made to horizontally offset the first floor living zone from the ground floor bedroom wing rather than stacking them vertically in a more economical manner. This additional cost was balanced by reducing floor area, but seen as a win in creating a natural protective zone to the exposed living spaces.
The spatial arrangement, orientation, views and the onerous site-specific height and setback requirements were all strong drivers during the design process, producing long extruded north facing living spaces that are defined by furniture and joinery not walls. The ground floor bunkers in with bedrooms thumped deep into the dunes, the floating first floor living zone takes in the spectacular views and acts as the command station overseeing all activities.
Refuge at Wildcoast is about creating a calm sense of place that provides opportunities for memories to be created, it resists complication and presents the contrary to a busy city life. The effort and rigour involved in details like the alignment of; light fittings with joinery, concrete patterns with door handles and tap fittings with tile layouts had to be seen but not heard.
A restrained material selection reduces noise and allows specific details to shine. Random patterns of stained timber battens against white sand joinery, celebrate a beautiful imperfection and mimic driftwood awash on the shore.
Spaces do not compete, designed to connect seamlessly allowing natural movement along the North facing axis. There is a conscious connection to the external spatial program, both visual and physical relationships are formed between the users at various locations and levels; the umpire lounging on the first-floor sofa calls “40 – Love”.
Wildcoast House in Melbourne, Victoria – Building Information
Architects practice: Rachcoff Vella Architecture
Builder: Layton Builders
Project size: 500 sqm
Site size: 3100 sqm
Completion date: 2018
Building levels: 2
Key products used:
Exterior
Board-marked off form concrete – 40MPA Concrete – Holcim / Gradcon
External Cladding – Secret fixed Shiplap – Radial Timber Silvertop Ash boards
Windows / Doors – Aluminium thermal broken double glazed – Energy Tech windows and doors – Thermeco / European Windows Company
Rendered Walls – Sand Cement Render – Extreme Render
Paving – Endicott Crazy Paving – Eco Outdoor
Roofing Lysaght Klip Lok 700 Hi-strength “Ultra” Windspray – Lysaght / Bluescope Steel
Interior
Timber Flooring – European Oak prefinished engineered boards (Danish White) – Royal Oak Floors
Timber Wall Cladding – European Oak prefinished engineered boards (Danish White) -Royal Oak Floors
Timber Joinery – European Oak Veneered/Solid (Danish White) – Ideal Cabinets
Vanity hobs – ‘Grey Tundra’ Natural Stone slabs – Signorino
Carpets – 100% Wool Langhorne ‘Chapel’ – Victoria Carpets
Wall and Floor Tiles – Ceramic (random pattern) – Signorino
Paint Finish – Wall & Ceiling – Haymes
Tapware Weathered Brass – Organic – Brodware
Kitchen Fixtures – Oven, Cooktop, Dishwasher – Miele
Vanity Basins – Bench mounted basin – Caroma
Bath – Freestanding Cube Sunstone – Caroma
Toilets – Cube Wall Faced Invisi – Caroma
Rangehood – Lismore Concealed unit – Qasair
Door Hardware – Weathered Brass ‘Lodden’ and Custom range – Designer Doorware
Lighting Kit mini downlights – Flow Mini
Mini – Roll track lights – Ambience Lighting
Photography © Shannon McGrath
Wildcoast House in Melbourne, Victoria images / information received 210720
Location: Clifton Hill, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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