Location: Sunrise Beach, Queensland
Designed By: Wilson Architects
About:
The Sunrise Beach House is a house located on the beach of the Sunshine Coast. To design a successful beach house you essentially would want to have a house which allows you to feel as if your apart of the outside environment, but still allowing you to be sheltered in the comfort of your own home. The Sunrise Beach House is a fusion of the landscape surrounding it with architecture successfully combining the built and natural environments. “Rather than prestige frontage and pergola clad rear, this house blurs its ‘entry’ and ‘exit’ into a series of walls, apertures and portals. Its edges and openings are every bit as important as the walls, roof and floor. Modern without overt or banal references, the design dances with shadow and light. Wilson displays a sculptor’s eye for material possibilities that brings into alignment elemental building materials of stone, water, timber and glass. It creates a compelling rhythm of opposites: solidity and transparency, light and dark, cool and warm, hard and soft.”
[Viridian, New World Glass (2008)]
[Viridian, New World Glass (2008)]
A House as an Environmental Filter:As a beach house it is almost a requirement to have beach winds and views. Sunrise Beach House has both of those requirements met in the design. Wilson Architects have designed it in a way that at different points a series of vignettes are framed against the house and landscape. When the house was first designed and built, it was not filled with the constraint of the surrounding buildings invading privacy, casting shaded areas over the site or disrupting the ocean breeze which the site recieved undisrupted. Instead a number of alternatives were thought up to cover almost any future residential third party constraints. The design for the outside entertaining areas of the house were then made interchangable and switchable to enable for future developments which may alternate and affect the house as it is now.
I personally like how the design of the house is done in a way that it can be open but also very enlosed. It is a very private residence and acts as an escape from the world even though it is located on such a busy road on the Sunshine Coast. This is achieved using mass concrete walls which repell the sound of the road at the back of the lot, yet do not disrupt the ocean breezes which are heading in a south easterly direction. They also to an extent help protect the dwelling from the heat of the afternoon sun, which is essential to keeping cool in the Queensland summer. This is also achieved through external timber cladding or privacy panels which are found offset of some of the walls, allowing the breeze to flow through but keeping a majority of the heat of the sun off the external shell of the house. These walls and cladding are what help to keep the house so secluded and private.
The environmental considerations which were accounted for in order to reduce added energy resources and maitenance include things like site orientation, lighting, cooling and heating.The house has the capability of being completely open to the outdoor areas with some walls/doors being made of sliding glass allowing for excellent ventilation within the residence.
With ponds and pools found around the courtyard of the house helping cool the breeze as it sweeps towards the house, the Sunrise Beach House is an exceptional house as an environmntal filter.
A House as a Container of Human Activities:As a house as a container for human activities, I believe the Sunrise beach meets the requirements. It is very private and secluded yet is big enough to entertain if you were to have guests, with terraces, a big courtyard and living area which can be opened up to one of the terraces or courtyard. It is also very easy to distinguish which areas are private to ensure guests were not interfering with your personal spaces.
In relation to the context of the site and its surroundings, it meets the requirements to act as a beach house and in that regard also functions as a beach house.
A House as a Delightful Experience:
The style in which this house has been designed is quite unique and complex to any other, yet it has such a sense of simplicity. Aesthetically it is a magnificent house, using materials such as raw concrete, glass and zinc with humbling timber and woven cane. The way in which it is designed is both inviting and relaxing, creating a constant feeling of delight.
References:
Australian Design Review (2011). Sunrise Beach House. Accessed March 16, 2011. http://www.idea-awards.com.au/2008-round-4/sunrise-beach-house/
Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (2008). Sunrise Beach House. Accessed March 16, 2011. http://www.aila.org.au/projects/qld/wilson-sunrise/default.htm
Viridian, New World Glass (2008). Case Studies – Watercolour – Sunrise Beach House. Accessed March 22, 2011. http://www.viridianglass.com/Case_Studies/Vision/vision12-2/default.aspx?Case_Id=vision-12
Wilson Architects (n.a.). Sunrise Beach House – Sunshine Coast. Accessed March 16, 2011. http://www.wilsonarchitects.com.au/practice_awards.html
Viridian, New World Glass (2008). Case Studies – Watercolour – Sunrise Beach House. Date accessed March 22, 2011. http://www.viridianglass.com/Case_Studies/Vision/vision12-2/default.aspx?Case_Id=vision-12
