Back Beach

Back Beach is reflexive, transient, resilient, a volume in the Sandscape. Conceived of as a found object in the dunes, it is both responsive and resistant to its coastal environment, site and surroundings, and intimately tuned to the pared back needs of its inhabitants. Everything that is not essential has been left out, and everything that remains is warmly celebrated. The site planning process followed a rigorous set of sustainability and buildability principles, and as such the building volume which ‘excavated itself’ from the design journey offers a full spectrum of opportunities for protection and exposure, light and shade, view and enclosure, relationships and isolation. The interior spaces which are carved from this volume speak to the intimacy of human occupation, retreat and connection, while remaining visually linked to the site and to a contemplation of the building’s own form. The experience of place, like the building itself, turns inwards to the courtyard as well as outwards to the landscape, finding its broadest embrace at the street front, and its deepest retreat at the building's pointed western end. Materiality is key to demonstrating the project intent, most notably via the vast suite of native Australian hardwoods (both externally and internally) which create a singular and durable backdrop for light, time and use.