Text provided by Ohlo Studio. The brief for Dune House was to create a sophisticated, contemporary, coastal, family retreat that pays tribute to the modern design era. It was to play to the strengths of the existing architectural design language and to integrate a material palette and sense of space that riffs on the expansive, sun-bleached, local Western Australian landscape.
The home was designed for a young couple with a passion for food, art, a coastal lifestyle and the preservation of design history. Ohlo Studio, Simon Pendal Architect and Steven Postmus from CAPA came together to deliver ‘Dune House’.
A guiding ethos for the design was better space, not more space. The challenge was to re-plan the interior of the dilapidated home within the existing building footprint that would evolve with the growth of the clients’ family.
The cramped, 4 bedroom, 1 bathroom house was converted into an airy 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home with new openings to the exterior that create a strong connection to the landscape.
The focus was on creating a level of detail, quality and function that would create a life of ease without excess. A home grows with the layers of memories and mementos of a lifetime. As the clients are a young couple, about to embark on creating their own little family, the designers recognised the need to allow for the accumulation of many layers in future years.
The intention at Dune House was to reduce the architectural material palette to several key materials in order to provide a crisp backdrop to an evolving collection of objects.
Photos by Jack Lovel
