Dream Escapes That You Can Rent

Rachel Nolan and Steven Farrell’s weekend house is located a couple of blocks from the beach on Australia’s Mornington Peninsula. The residents wanted to rent out the place when they weren’t using it, a decision that guided the design from the start. For example, they originally specified a complex folding-door system but scrapped the idea, favoring ease of use over esoteric details. “If we were renting to someone who didn’t know how to use that, it would easily break,” Nolan explains.

Rachel Nolan and Steven Farrell’s weekend house is located a couple of blocks from the beach on Australia’s Mornington Peninsula. Built with passive principles in mind, the low-slung structure features double-thick brick walls for thermal massing. The vertical wood cladding is unfinished spotted gum, a local timber.