Casuarina Beach House C109 has been designed as a modest investment property for the holiday rental market. The house aims to be a direct challenge to the generally low level of design quality of the ‘speculative’ house market, and to set a benchmark for this house type.
The house has a very simple strategy designed to take advantage of the outdoors through a direct connection between Living/Kitchen spaces and the timber deck on the north and the paved courtyard sheltered within the house. It is these spaces, shaded from the summer sun, but designed to take advantage of cooling on shore breezes, that will become the prime recreation and entertainment zones of the house.
The construction involves a mixture of single skin masonry walls to the ground level with lightweight framed walls clad in painted fibre cement to the upper levels. Timber battens add privacy to the glazed stair and first floor bathroom, and timber pergolas to the northern face of the house add shading from summer sun. Floors are mainly reinforced concrete to the ground floor, with the raised Living/Dining Room in lightweight timber. The upper level has a timber-framed floor.