Our Hedges Residence is sited on one of Queensland’s iconic public beaches. The house is freestanding among a lineup of houses with mixed architectural styles and materials.

As with many of our houses in built-up areas, the house has a stillness and is very private, designed to mitigate the busy road at its front with the building’s almost windowless facade while being oriented towards the sea.

The building sits quietly among the other houses, being built almost entirely from concrete. The result is a singular aesthetic that gives the building a clear identity, speaking of solidity, resilience, and permanence in its exposure to the sea.

The idea of a building being designed to its occupants' needs, supporting how they like to live, is a core foundation of our work. The clients were interested in creating a building that would not date stylistically, with the mindset of it being their last
home. As a family of five, with three children who are all very connected to the surrounding beach environment, the house needed to be robust and not precious—a house where you did not need to take your shoes off to enter.

The house’s concrete palette was continued inside, with the use of timber and travertine softening the aesthetic. The house was designed for both day and night, with a lighting design that creates beautiful plays of light and dark.

Apart from its thermal values and its ability to be opened up for natural ventilation, the house was designed to defy the need to be “redone” or renovated in the future. The significance of the embodied energy involved in a renovation is often overlooked in regard to sustainability. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, creating a building that resists this trend over time is, in our opinion, a driving force behind what we strive to achieve in these buildings.