St Andrews Beach House

Located on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia, St Andrews Beach House is a two story circular holiday home that takes advantage of the remoteness of site and expansive 360° views. The area of St Andrews Beach is wonderfully underdeveloped. There’s no shopping strip and no restaurants, just a corner store and a brewery. What it does offer is serenity and seclusion, a wildly beautiful coastline, and some of the most celebrated residential architecture in Australia. The owner of St Andrews Beach House was fortunate enough to own a site abutting national parkland, close to the foreshore and directly within the sand dunes. Bucking the current trend he did not want an oversized and ostentatious holiday home. Instead he challenged us to design him a ‘hard tent’ or a ‘bach’ - a New Zealand term describing a very small and basic shack, or shed. With no neighbouring forms to respond to, the brief - to design a modest, two-bedroom beach shack, was freely imagined. The house stands alone amongst the wild bushland, rugged sand dunes and scrub. Standing less than five metres in radius, it is an object in the landscape. A Euclidean form set amongst rolling coastal terrain. Observing the fragility of the location, the house is small and befitting of the landscape, and respectfully integrates into the environment. The shape grew from a response to the views, which extend in all directions, and the simplification of the interior spaces. A house with no dominant focal point, no corridors and no wasted space lends itself to a circular design. The plan of the house uses the rational and precise geometry of a circle, which extrudes into a tube. The internal spaces adhere to the rules of form, guiding and arranging segments that divide the interior, with a spiral staircase as its central core, providing light and air but also snug spaces. The ground floor comprises kitchen, living and dining, with a bathroom and a laundry. Upstairs the sleeping area is essentially one bunk room separated by curtains - informal, flexible and casual. An open deck area, within the tube, unites the spaces when the bi-fold doors are opened. Most Australians want a deck or a veranda, here, instead of adding something to the outside, the deck has been eroded out of the form itself, creating a two story space that’s both outside and inside. The house displays an innovative use of timber, with chunky details and exposed portal frames. This is not a slick beach house, but a relaxed and informal escape, built with materials that will patina and weather, like an old coastal wharf. Offering just the right amount of space and comfort, St Andrews Beach House provides genuine relaxation, adventure and escape by challenging the occupants to live differently.