Neeson Murcutt Architects

The Spotted Gum is a timeless feature in Australian iconography. Its characteristic mottled bark and graceful shady limbs are a powerful feature of our country’s rugged landscape. As are the rustic timber panels that characterised so many grand colonial homesteads and downtrodden miners’ shacks.

And so it is with the North Avoca House, a coastal family weekender bedecked with generous swathes of Spotted Gum timber. Maybe this very timber has been part of the Australian building vernacular before, for every single cladding board is recycled, and bears the beautiful palette of colours to show it. With strands of silver, sand and strawberry blonde, the home has a sunand- surf bleached appeal befitting of its coastal locale.

Cascading down its stepped site in a waterfall of varicoloured timber, the North Avoca House challenges the pattern of standard bungalows with which it shares its unexceptional suburban street address. Parts of the Central Coast may have been completely transformed with breathtaking beachside getaways of the rich and famous, but this is not one of them.

But while there is nothing grandiose about its surroundings, this is, after all, the Central Coast, and the proximity to North Avoca Beach – the sea breezes and glittering ocean views – were too good to leave unharnessed. And so the flat part of the site, which was previously occupied by a fibro shack, became a mini sports oval for the dogs and grandchildren, with a separable flat at the rear, and all the main internal spaces stacked up against the steep incline at the rear of the site. Building on the slope was a more expensive option in terms of budget, but it was all good value for money. Whereas this portion of the site was once an unused hindrance, it is now the transforming factor in the design, inspiring every aspect of the home, from its basic structure and grand stature, to its use of light and ventilation, and of course, its contact with those lusted-after glimpses of the sea.

To catch these views, the home spans three storeys, with the groundlevel flat acting as a ‘grandstand’ to the front lawn, the bedrooms in the middle layer, and the living areas on the top floor. The rich Blackbutt flooring and blonde Hoop Pine plywood joinery follow on seamlessly from the Spotted Gum exterior, giving the interior the same laid-back beachy character as the public façade.

A single straight-run stair runs along the southern edge of the home from front door to back. From the outside, this stairway corridor seems almost an afterthought attachment, but its integral role becomes apparent once inside, where, as the main passageway of the home, it connects the three separate living spaces: ground floor apartment, mid-floor bedrooms, and upper-storey shared space. An offset continuous narrow skylight lights the stair from above and looks back to that other mainstay of Australia’s coastal landscape: an impressive old Norfolk Island Pine at the front of the site.

Like the stairway, sustainability is an integral theme running throughout the whole home design. Structurally, while building to the slope required a higher budget, it is an investment that delivers, with good solar orientation, shading and natural ventilation. On the exterior, a combination of glazed, screened and fully-recycled solid timber panels provide a specific balance of light, privacy and views. In the garden, the wholly local, indigenous flora is nourished by collected rainwater

Designed especially to host multigenerational family weekends, the home is nevertheless modest in size, with individual bedroom balconies so that the children have room to make more noise, and the adults have a place to get away from it all. The exception to this modular living are the larger deck spaces of the upper storey, extending to the north and east. Shared but discreet, they are just right for sunny family breakfasts and golden summer afternoons, looking out over the landscape to the carefree sea beyond. +

1 The home is a simple layout of unified elements: (clockwise from top) The shared spaces on the top storey, bedrooms at centre, separable flat on ground level, frontyard ‘oval’, and connecting stairway ‘spine’. 2 A single graduated stairway – lit from above by a continuous skylight aperture – serves to unite the three levels of living space. 3 The timber theme continues inside, lending a sense of simple beachside harmony to the home. 4 Extending the upper-storey shared living spaces, larger decks open out to the north and east, capitalising on elevated views and solar access. 5 Separate balconies extend the bedroom spaces of this multigenerational family weekender, giving each family member a place of individual retreat.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Brett Boardman