Palm Beach retreat among the trees

The owners of the original sandstone cottage on this site asked Tanner Kibble Denton Architects to design its renewal and extension for extended family weekends and holiday retreats. The design required contemporary facilities with a new pavilion added amongst the ancient angophoras to accommodate adult children and their growing families, including areas for time spent together and private spaces to retreat to. Maximizing the wonderful northern views along Palm Beach to Barrenjoey Head was also important.

The mature angophora trees were to be retained so therefore the design needed to work around a restricted footprint. This developed into a curved ended form for the pavilion and a covered walkway link weaving between the trees between the pavilion and existing cottage. The separation of the new pavilion from the existing cottage allowed a certain freedom in the design resulting in a solid curved timber form glimpsed through the trees and capped with a floating roof rendering the structure transparent at canopy level.

The new forms are clad in vertical western red cedar boards will be left to grey off to the same colour as the surrounding tree trunks. Sandstone from the site is used extensively in walls and earth rendered walls are employed as linking elements.

Construction materials: earth render made with crushed sandstone sourced from site, masonry, stone, concrete, western red cedar, glass and steel.

Sustainable features: water collection, storage and re-use, passive design to avoid use of air con including appropriate orientation, shading, ventilation and position of thermal mass, retention of mature trees and utilising sandstone on site to create earth render.

[Photography by Michael Nicholson and Lachlan Rowe (TKDA)]