A new-build, four-storey home cut into an extremely steep bush block at Killcare, designed by N.A. Hill Designs to capture uninterrupted views over Killcare and Putty Beach.
The basement and half the entry level had to be excavated through sandstone and extremely hard ironstone, with 45 concrete piles driven six metres deep to lock in the surrounding stone before the build could start. An indoor pool was added to the scope late and was rocksawed straight out of the earth at basement level. Alongside it, a rainwater tank was rocksawed from the same stone to feed the home’s bushfire suppression system, with piping run throughout the house to a sprinkler network linked to an EMBAR fire detection system. For a stretch it looked like two pools being built side by side, in a space with barely any room to move. It is one of the most challenging sites we have tackled.
A cantilevered staircase spans three levels with a wine cellar visible beneath it from the front entry, while a glass lift reveals ocean views as you rise through the house. The indoor pool and a steam sauna sit in the basement, humidity controlled with mechanical ventilation run through the basement pile voids. Feature timber ceilings, spa-like bathrooms and high-end joinery run throughout, with minimalist aluminium stacker doors maximising glazing at every level.
Built to BAL 40 and N4 wind category, the home features a suspended concrete slab to the entry level with burnished concrete floors and hydronic heating, off-form concrete planter boxes and a curved four-metre-high off-form concrete wall.
The basement slab was redesigned from the initial plans as a suspended slab to suit ground conditions.
The material palette changes as the house climbs. At basement level it is blockwork and off-form concrete, the off-form doing the planter boxes and the curved four-metre wall. The pool area floor is Moss River limestone, the south pool wall blockwork, and the north wall backlit Crystallo natural stone. Off-form carries the leading edge of the pool ceiling and western red cedar lines the rest of it, with an LED glow running the perimeter of the room. The sauna is cedar and sits at the west end of the pool, tucked in under the stairs.
The entry level is clad in Cemintel Barestone, with a galvanised dowel and flat bar balustrade to the planter box and down the stairs beside the driveway. External floors are 600 x 400 mm Moss River limestone with a drop edge to the stairs, and inside it is burnished concrete over the suspended slab.
From the kitchen level up, the building goes black. Matt black castellated aluminium cladding, a glass balustrade set in a deck-mounted channel and finished flush with the stone tile, and the same aluminium picked up again in the exposed corner sections of the lift and the horizontals between the windows. The lift shaft and the cab are both glass. Deck ceilings are plasterboard. Internally the floors are Moss River limestone with medium brown timber veneer joinery, currently specified as Laminex Absolute Grain Teak in a True Scale finish. The master level runs the same palette, under a matt black KLIP-LOK roof.
There is no landscape plan on this one yet, and the site has mostly settled the question for us. The block backs onto Bouddi National Park, so the clients are after Australian natives that carry the bush up to the house instead of competing with it, with angophoras as the eventual showstoppers once there is room for them to establish. Closer in, the off-form planter boxes above the garage are what will change the way the entry reads. Dichondra and Casuarina ‘Cousin Itt’ spilling over the top edge softens the concrete without hiding it, which is the reason for pouring it off-form in the first place.
