Image Credit : Simon Whitbread
Project Overview
Casa C represents a bold departure from conventional suburban architecture, challenging the predictable formula of dwellings sandwiched between front and backyards. Instead, this innovative design explores an interweaving of built form and landscape, creating a home of environmental porosity.
The architectural arrangement is characterised by its C shaped plan, which deliberately unfolds the traditional suburban envelope, establishing a permeable boundary that welcomes coastal breezes, frames strategic views, and invites outdoor living into the daily rhythm of the home. This permeability isn't merely aesthetic—it's functional, allowing the structure to breathe with its environment and respond to the coastal climate.
At the heart of Casa C lies its most distinctive feature: a concealed central garden that serves as the gravitational centre of the home. This protected outdoor room becomes an extension of the interior living spaces, blurring conventional distinctions between inside and outside. Daily domestic rituals naturally flow into this garden sanctuary, transforming routine activities into experiences connected to landscape and climate.
Through this thoughtful arrangement, Casa C achieves a dwelling that feels simultaneously sheltered and expansive. The house doesn't simply occupy its site—it engages with it, creating a reciprocal relationship between architecture and landscape that enriches the lived experience of its inhabitants and offers a compelling alternative to the hermetically sealed suburban typology that dominates residential development.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Adriano Pupilli
Aoiffe O'Kelly
Harry Murdoch
Pablo Codina
Project Brief
Casa C explores interweaving of house and landscape to increase porosity of the home to views, coastal breezes and outdoor life. Home to a family of five, the design embraces a hidden central garden and pool, allowing daily life to extend into landscape and the landscape to extend into the home.
The C-shaped plan contains two wings of sleeping spaces on first floor and butlers kitchen, laundry, bathroom, guest room and undercroft on ground level. The two wings meet at a central volume along the southern boundary, maximising northern light to garden and interiors. The central volume contains a light and lofty kitchen and dining space with access bridge above. A sunken lounge follows the fall of the site, creating extra height for the lounge while allowing for a mezzanine, secondary living space above.
A suspended sculptural stair links open-plan living spaces on ground floor with the mezzanine above, a careful balance of connection and separation between living spaces.
Externally the home is clad in fibre cement sheets, perforated over glazing and operable via bi-folding mechanism to adjust levels of exposure and create movement in the facade. The cladding and rectilinear forms are a nod to mid-century beach homes, simple in their planning and material pallet.
Through a careful balance of connectedness and separation, the home responds to the client's brief for a sanctuary for the family to retreat quietly, come together as a family and welcome guests.
Project Innovation/Need
The design cleverly balances social connection with privacy through its thoughtful configuration of east and west wings around a central living space and garden. This C-shaped plan creates natural opportunities for both planned and spontaneous interactions while maintaining retreat spaces that feel connected to the home's pulse.
The seamless integration of pool and garden transforms these elements from occasional features to extensions of daily living. Positioned close to interior spaces, they encourage regular engagement with seasonal changes and outdoor conditions rather than being isolated amenities.
Operable screens introduce dynamic flexibility, allowing the home's relationship with its surroundings to evolve throughout the day based on weather, privacy needs, and seasons. This responsive system creates an ever-changing façade that enlivens both street presentation and courtyard spaces.
The layered approach to both cladding and spatial organisation provides adaptable privacy zones that can transform from intimate family spaces to open entertaining areas. The rectilinear form gains visual warmth through timber screening and the planted carport roof.
Strategic level changes throughout the plan reduce perceived bulk while carefully positioned apertures frame coastal views through open screens, maintaining the home's intimate proportions while maximising connection to the surrounding landscape.
Design Challenge
The clients, a family with three young children, sought a home fostering both connection and retreat. Their vision included outdoor integration while maximising views to Curl Curl Beach, garden and pool, with privacy options when needed.
The architectural response embraces the challenging sloping site, transforming topographical constraints into design opportunities. The C-shaped plan cascades down the terrain in thoughtfully stepped levels that follow natural contours. This terraced arrangement minimises excavation while creating a hierarchy of spaces that enhance functionality and visual connection.
The slope enables split levels that naturally delineate different functional zones while maintaining connectivity. A sunken lounge creates an intimate atmosphere and connection to the garden, while the elevated secondary living captures daylight and expansive coastal vistas. The building footprint works harmoniously with the gradient to optimise connection to natural ground, passive solar gain and natural ventilation.
The offset east and west wings capture sea breezes and views while embracing a sheltered garden—a sanctuary where the family converges. Children's quarters occupied the western wing, while parents retreat to the eastern section.
A secondary operable skin of bi-folding, perforated fibre cement panels allows adjustment of the home's openness according to mood and seasonal variations. This adaptable layer enables large glazed façade sections to perform efficiently through solar protection and wind screening, creating a responsive dwelling that breathes with its occupants—opening to embrace the coastal setting or closing to create intimate environments.
Sustainability
Stormwater is filtered and detained through the use of a large OSD system and green roof, minimising strain and contamination of the stormwater system. This clever setup not only manages heavy downpours but also naturally filters pollutants before they reach council drains.
Material lifecycle optimisation strategies include a protective layer of fibre cement screening to shield and extend the life of aluminium glazing systems. This thoughtful material selection ensures durability in our harsh Australian climate while reducing ongoing maintenance requirements. Timber screens are made from Accoya engineered plantation softwood, which locks away carbon during growth and maintains a small carbon footprint throughout production and on-site installation.
Energy efficiency strategies feature perforated sunscreens on glazing that control daylight while preventing the interior from overheating in the summer months. The design employs passive solar heating and cooling principles, reducing reliance on air conditioning through thermal mass and generous openings that are strategically placed to draw in cooling seabreezes .
Rooftop solar panels generate renewable electricity, while underground rainwater tanks beneath the guest room capture precious water for irrigation and pool use. All lighting and plumbing fixtures are energy and water efficient.
Together, these sustainable design approaches demonstrate a holistic commitment to environmental responsibility across water management, material selection, and ongoing energy conservation, creating a building that's gentle on the environment while providing inspiring and functional spaces for the occupants.
Architecture - Residential - Constructed
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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