For a modern home sharing waterfront with more modern homes, it was imperative to employ subtle details that truly captured the majesty of the site’s location. Instead of using great swathes of glass to indiscriminately overlook the site and surrounds, creating issues for privacy and thermal regulation, the design instead focused on framing key views and aspects to highlight the best of the location. Each window was designed as a focal point for each space, giving each window a sense of purpose and meaning that actively enhanced and worked harder. Each particular vista is framed and highlighted, and therefore almost unmissable. The architecture works hard to appreciate and to foster appreciation for its setting, as all good architecture should.

A delicate dance of mass and proportion, tempered by aspects of symmetry and given dynamism through variation. Balance is achieved through the symmetry of the plan and the complementary masses of each floor. Perched at the very top of the home on the second floor is the master bedroom, clad in rich brown timber to evoke a sense of being in a nest or hide; the ultimate place of seclusion and privacy, with views over the Kogarah Bay riverscape.

As well as acting symbolically, the timber cladding helps to contrast with the stark white render of the central spaces, located on the first floor. This cladding enjoys a dialogue with the other timber accent walls used to frame windows or articulate the façade, further adding to its dynamic appeal. The separate zones or proportions of the interior are revealed first through the massing as reflective of the plan, and then through the use of timber, as accents upon the massing. Simple, minimalistic, elegant; the Carlton Crescent residence oozes sophistication and quality.