Dream by the beach

This project has still not reach a conclusion... unless it has.

An elevated lot with sweeping views across a park to the ocean with an existing awkward collection of different style buildings at different levels presented a significant design challenge.  Should it be demolished and leveled? Should parts of it be retained and engulfed in a new build?

Or should we wipe clean and start again?

The whole property front to back is a sand hill rising from 8 metres at the street to 11.74 at the house and then falling again to 6.5m at the back.  The existing house itself steps down from it's 11.74 front section to 11.21 bedroom wing and then down to 9.21 garage level.

Bit exaggerated. Those hills in the middle were a pick up of gutters to the existing house but you get the idea of the slope.

The client wanted to engage elements of energy efficient design and I have always practiced good principles of Passive Solar Design. The street front facing the ocean was south east, not ideal for lots of glass.  North was at roughly a 45 degree angle to the rear, overlooking the neighbour. Not where you want lots of glass.
PSD engages the orientation of the building, glass and eave to north, minimal protected glass elsewhere.  Here we could have to engage construction techniques to create a more strictly controlled atmosphere within the home including sealing the building.  Harder with renovating an existing building but not impossible.

One good thing was that extensive solar panels would be at the rear of the roof shapes.

The lot was narrow for a large home where you want maximum windows to the ocean view plus access down the side to the rear garage.

The client wanted to incorporate features for possible future wheel chair access which does have an impact in designing a house on a sand hill.

Our first attempt was to demolish the front section, retaining the now unapprovable higher floor level and mesh in with the rear bedroom wing section that never matched the front section anyway and creating a connection to the rear garage

We dropped the garage and settled for a smaller deck

My first idea was a new garage at the front that we could roof as an entertaining open deck.

The existing front house was not at the same angle as the bedroom wing, being off by only around 12 degrees.  Neither were square to the side boundary which was built with a raised wall for privacy.

There were so many awkward elements that it was a real challenge to get old and new to work together coherently

In the end, as the brief developed, including introducing wheelchair access it became apparent that renovating the existing building was not going to produce the best outcome and a wipe of the exiting house buildings, loss of the higher floor level and allowing a new 2 storey home design at the one level would bring a more satisfactory result rather than struggling with the existing 'features'.  We could still retain the double garage at the much lower level to the rear.

So where did we go next?
To Part 2 of this story. 
TBA