Back to the essentials. For the owners of Drip-Dry house, we came to understand that this was a philosophy for everything. Not just a design brief concerned with number of bedrooms or style of window, but an ideology about how they wanted to live and experience each other’s company.
This inter-generational home has been designed to exorcise all the unnecessary features of modern life and strip it back to its most prized foundations: Spending time with the people you love. The layout enables multiple generations to use the property together or apart allowing relationships to augment and grow - grandparents become parents, children turn into grandchildren and then swiftly back again. As a house near the beach with a young family, being ‘wash and wear’ was a pillar of the design brief. Concrete floors throughout are easily swept, water-wise native landscaping is easily maintained and all accessories like screens and blinds are back-to-basics analogue operation. At one end of the expansive double height living space is a budget friendly, ‘domesticated’ commercial kitchen that has been constructed out of off-the-shelf stainless steel units including benchtops on castors and integrated sink and dishwasher components. The benchtop units can be unlocked to enable reconfiguration for different situations; a bar and outdoor kitchen in summer or a buffet unit for big family meals.
The floor plan is incredibly simple and efficient. The main house is made up of two coupled boxes of varying heights. This allows light from the north and a free flow of the summer breezes through to the south. The front box is hard working, containing a laundry, three bedrooms, a bunk room, and two bathrooms. The rear box is lofty and generous, housing a unified kitchen, lounge and dining space. The site’s north-south orientation made it possible to place decks on both sides of the home, allowing the family to chase the sun or shade, giving them an all-day-long indoor/outdoor living experience. An outbuilding in the same style as the main house gives a place for guests to crash or the occupants to work remotely when the surf’s good or the kids are on holidays.
