House for BEES

Winner: Overall Winner

As a garden suburb, Mosman’s built environment greatly benefits from our stewardship of its natural environment. Retaining the existing north-facing Federation home, a valuable participant in the character of the street, the new single storey addition is sited to the rear, to preserve and enhance existing eastern and southern edible gardens.

Servant spaces of kitchen and pantry anchor the dining and family spaces, which are topped by a single, expressive roof plane that draws winter sun in and extends eastward to contain a monsoon eave. This captures coastal breezes to passively ventilate the house, irrespective of weather.

Balancing an economy of footprint with volumetric spaciousness, the design values less over more. Nuanced in its proportions, detail and material selection, each element has been considered in relation to the whole, refining the design to an elegant, irreducible complexity.

Sustainability

Designed to maximise opportunities for passive design and reduce its footprint (carbon and physical) to a minimum, structural steel was refined to create material lightness. Photovoltaics, rainwater harvesting, edible gardens and native bee hive, reclaimed brick, cork, timber framed glazing and plywood minimise the carbon footprint and demonstrate circular design principles.