Gold Coast
And
Northern Rivers
Region
Gold Coast
And
Northern Rivers
Region
Gold Coast
And
Northern Rivers
Region
Bela
WINNER OF KEN NEWTON AND BRIAN MOSSOP PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD
Bela draws from the Australian aspiration for beach side living on the Gold Coast. The conceptual drivers behind the architectural expression and crafted interior are derived from the ideals relating to the ‘beach house’ and its emotive connection for residents. Architectural and experiential qualities of the mid-century modernist Gold Coast ‘beach house’ are reinterpreted through a collection of stacked conceptual ‘beach house’ apartments that connect with people with place.
By Rothelowman
Photography by Scott Burrows
Ed Hardy Park Amenities
The project is conceptually devised as a pavilion in the park, taking a backseat to the beautiful coastal and parkland setting. Honest and refined – a lightweight aluminium structure floats over a robust polished concrete block base. The architecture is devised to celebrate the small moments and heighten the experience of the beautiful site for people of all abilities – a view when washing your hands, dappled natural light from above, natural ventilation, the use of authentic materials and vibrant colours and a place to perch and wait for your mate – all whilst balancing the requirements of a standardised amenities design guide, the extreme demands of a high use public facility and exposed coastal environment.
By ME
Photography by Christopher Frederick Jones
Coastside
‘Coastside’ celebrates position.
The architecture produced by award-winning practice, degenhartSHEDD, invites cooling breezes, balances light-filled spaces with pools of shade, and makes living across three floors seamless. The upside-down top-floor living has been designed to capture ocean and city skyline views, with the mid-floor devoted to sleeping, studying, or working. The functional ground floor is poolside, ideal for guests and entertaining. In the clients’ words, “Our architect designed the home we wanted”.
The enticing facade not only fits comfortably in its beachside Gold Coast neighbourhood, but also hides a house full of versatile space and surprises, with the narrow block and footprint soon forgotten. When entering this home, expect character and comfort. Features range from a ‘super-kitchen’ to a snug window seat, while gentle angles dotted around the home make narrow spaces wide and low ceilings high.
“For our family, this is successful architecture.” — Andrew and Caroline
By degenhartSHEDD architecture + urban design
Photography by Tom Anthony
Norfolk, Burleigh Heads
Norfolk drew inspiration from the Norfolk Pine’s pinecone, which closes to protect its seeds and opens when the weather and settings are optimum. In the same way, Norfolk’s adaptable architecture suits the ever-evolving coastal environment.
Norfolk is confident, sculptural and elegantly realised at every angle. It is designed to touch lightly on its site. To give residents the sense of being more outside than in, with sliding screens for adaptable shading and endless glazing that draws the beach into every living space.
“We wanted to design something that celebrated the site,” explains architect, Koichi Takada. “When you open the doors to the terraces, you have that feeling of being at one with the elements.” Takada enjoys seeing the way residents position the screens depending on the time of day and amount of sun. “The façades are continually animated, not dissimilar to the way nature performs,” he says.
By Koichi Takada Architects
Photography by Scott Burrows
Lemontree Lane House
Designed for a young family of five, the project is conceptually devised as a carved mass of edited views of the surrounding landscape arranged around a north facing outdoor room and outdoor playspace. Materials are robust and naturally sympathetic of the site’s tones and textures. The form is purposefully restrained, a backdrop to the beautiful natural setting of the site.
By ME
Photography by Christopher Frederick Jones
MxA House
The design response for MxA House evolved out of early discussions with the client about 1960’s beach shacks and the fun, informal living and outdoor lifestyle they encouraged. A significant part of the brief was also “pre-set” by the stringent sustainable planning codes of The Ecovillage at Currumbin.
In response to this brief and a restricted site the design resolved into 4 pavilions separated by courtyards and connected by a breezeway/lightbox with a folding roof tying it all together. The courtyards capture Winter sun, natural light, funnel breezes, and provide a green outlook. The breezeway allows the building to breathe even during storms, allows doors to remain open on hot nights, provides natural light during the day and glows at night.
MxA House is compact in area but big in liveability, it is relaxed and fun to live in but serious in how it functions and its environmental role.
By Symbiosphere
Photography by Russell Shakespeare
The Lanes Residences
The Lanes Residences embraces architectural innovation to provide a sustainable living environment and social community. With the climate-sensitive structure expressed in the façade, The Lanes elevates the standard of sustainable architecture and is intended to be a catalyst for further high‐quality mid-rise development.
The mid-rise buildings introduce a new height typology to the area and are scaled and oriented to engage with the landscape and future development. The structural façade, inspired by nature, is sculpted to encourage public engagement and optimise environmental performance. Contoured columns create engaging interstitial spaces between the private towers and public domain. Rising to cradle the towers, they partially shade the faceted glass walls and reduce the heat load across the buildings.
Internal apartment configuration provides residents with comfortable temperatures without artificial cooling. Building amenities, including pool, terrace, sauna, spa and gymnasium, as well as retail and commercial spaces, foster community and reduce dependency on transportation.
By Contreras Earl Architecture with Sunland Group
Photography by John Gollings and Peter Sexty
Siarn
Located on the corner of The Esplanade and 25th Avenue on the northern reach of Palm Beach, Siarn comprises just 16, two-per-floor contemporary apartments, offering exclusive coastal residences in a timeless design with a form and function that effortlessly adapts to the coastal lifestyle of Palm Beach.
Inspired by the surrounding landscape of waves, sand and headland rock formations, Siarn embodies the local context, from the western façade, with its sculptural array of textured panels and angled lines, to the beachside façade that has been modelled to express a unique individuality for each apartment.
Architectural elements of angled balconies, varying levels and movable screens provide a dynamic sculptural form enhancing the beachfront skyline.
A series of staggered balconies and privacy screens represent the stacked rocks of the headland, optimising privacy and security without compromising the homes’ coastline vistas and view corridors to Stradbroke Island, Surfers Paradise, Currumbin and beyond.
By BDA Architecture
Photography by Andy Macpherson
St Thomas Aquinas Centre
The St Thomas Aquinas Centre provides an assured urban presence, renewed circulation and opportunities for collaboration at Aquinas College, the Gold Coast’s oldest co-education school.
Assembling its leadership, curriculum leaders and teaching staff in a central, flexible space, the new administration building delivers layered entry and exit experiences for students, staff and their communities.
Working within the footprint of previous facilities, the Centre amplifies key lines of circulation and patterns of occupation – creating a welcoming and thoughtfully-landscaped address to the street.
Deicke Richards was responsible for Aquinas’ current master plan, which identifies future projects including science and student facilities, a chapel, performing arts building and multipurpose space. The St Thomas Aquinas Centre comprises its first completed stage.
By Deicke Richards
Photography by Christopher Frederick Jones
HOTA Gallery
HOTA Gallery is third built element of ARM Architecture’s masterplan for the precinct, which transforms a Gold Coast administrative site into a mammoth cultural and landscape precinct along the Nerang River in Surfers Paradise.
At 9,100 m², it’s one of Australia’s largest regional galleries. It opened in May 2021 and houses the City’s permanent collection of contemporary art and cultural artifacts, and hosts international touring collections.
Like the neighbouring HOTA Outdoor Stage, the pedestrian bridge to Chevron Island and the surrounding landscape, the Gallery uses Voronoi geometry. A cellular web was laid over the entire HOTA masterplan as a technique for staging projects, to bring unity, and to give a distinct visual character to the site.
By ARM Architecture
Photography by John Gollings
Marlin Villas
The Marlin Villas are a contemporary expression of suburban infill development for a high-end southern Gold Coast property. As a pair of free-standing villas, the design utilises the buildings separation to enhance passive solar qualities of natural light and harnessing of coastal breezes which was particularly important for the south facing site.
Internally, the design is orientated around a central void. Split-levels are connected within the void via a labyrinth of stairs and gangways. The middle floor is positioned to be floating within the volume of the void, demonstrating visual connectivity between all living spaces and the canal. The ability to live and entertain with a close relationship to the canal was highly desired by the client.
Open circulation spaces, defined roof form, cleverly placed windows and sub-tropical landscaping encourage cool breezes and enhance visual connection between indoor and outdoor.
By Shane Denman Architects
Photography by Andy Macpherson Studio, Kristian Philipp and Desire Media
Tin Lizzie
Simple direction was for Tin Lizzie to be a ‘big tin shed’. The challenge was creating a form expressing these aspirations, local vernacular architecture while embracing the coastal location.
Typical shed form is minimal so key qualities were given prominence. The tin roof is exaggerated by reaching low towards the street, a contemporary take on the traditional shed. Angled blockwork walls cut to mimic the roof provide privacy and a backdrop for vegetation.
Layout was influenced by desire to create a link between the beach and pool, providing necessary facilities along the journey. Open plan arrangement of living spaces introduces passive solar design solutions to a south facing area. A negative space garden surrounded by operable glazing helps cool NE trade winds before they flow into living spaces and escape through the void.
The entry void and vaulted ceiling allow natural light in which is diffused by polycarbonate wall treatments.
By Shane Denman Architects
Photography by Andy Macpherson Studio
Banksia House
Drawing inspiration from the Banksia Integrifolia native to site, the house responds to the challenges of living against the Northern NSW coastline. A robust, yet environmentally and economically focussed building, Banksia House offers its occupants a heightened connection to ‘place’ and emphasises the importance of custodianship.
By Aphora Architecture
Photography by Andy Macpherson
Daybreak Residence
Located on the beachfront in Northern NSW, Daybreak was created for a couple who were ready for a permanent sea change and to fully embrace a ‘beach house’ way of living. Multiple outdoor living zones and the ability for the whole house to open and be connected to the beach and landscape, saw the creation of a home that was fun and generous enough to host and entertain the couples many friends and family.
Designed around a central courtyard, two pavilions bookend and enclose the integral outdoor living space and pool. Landscaping and its integration with the building and neighbouring coastal bushland, whilst also providing privacy from neighbours, were an elemental component of the project from conception. Fibre cement cladding, breezeblocks, crazy paving and varying timber batten patterns were used throughout to reference and reinterpret the iconic Australian coastal architecture of the area into a modern family home.
By Paul Uhlmann Architects
Photography by Andy Macpherson Studio
Miami Aquatic Centre
The Miami Aquatic Centre has been a well-loved community hub since it opened in the 1970s. Architect Liquid Blu was engaged to upgrade the ageing facility to meet the needs of the fast-growing local population.
The work comprises a new 50-metre outdoor pool and children’s splash pad, and a new building that houses a heated indoor pool, change rooms, a cafe terrace, administrative functions and upgraded services.
Elegant and welcoming, the architecture evokes the mid-century holiday shacks once common to the region, using simple geometry in corrugated steel and a sandy colour palette. A focus on accessibility encourages people of all abilities to participate, building community.
The sensitive upgrade has breathed new life into the Centre, increasing amenity whilst respecting its existing identity and its heritage as an Olympic training ground. Through thoughtful, climate-appropriate architecture and landscaping, the project makes a positive contribution to Miami and community wellness.
By Liquid Blu
Photography by Angus Martin Photography
Currumbin Waters House
Currumbin Waters House is the renovation of a single storey 1989 AV Jennings Display Home which sits on a shared title with the other three house models along a common driveway.
A set of small deletions have been used to open the house up along its North/South and East/West axes to introduce breeze and light to the interior. Simple structures are then used on the boundaries to give a much more generous sense of space and bring the outside in.
Brick elements are retained to provide a memory of the original plan and to stretch the interior into the landscape. Simple paling ‘fence’ structures manage privacy and create an extended pedestrian threshold along the shared boundary.
We’re hoping this project can set an example for a budget conscious re-purposing of this building typology on the Gold Coast that will allow a much more sustainable, connected and conscious way of living.
By Nielsen Jenkins
Photography by Nikolas Strugar
Watersedge
Watersedge is a sophisticated, efficient, waterfront duplex development. The design rationale was connection, sanctuary, liveability and place making with the principles of a courtyard design enabling dual aspect for living spaces. Occupants can enjoy a northerly aspect to a private, protected, landscaped courtyard whilst simultaneously enjoying southerly water views. The living spaces can be completely opened up from the water through to the garden or closed and adjusted to suit the required functionality. Immediate and distant views connect one to the home’s place within the context of the area and region. Environmentally conscious, the duplex enjoys plentiful natural light, natural ventilation, passive heating and passive cooling.
A rich and refined palette of raw materials, colours and textures used internally and externally allows the design to flow between spaces with an elegant, contemporary, resort-villa aesthetic. The connection to place is harmonious, one literally feels they are living on the water’s edge.
By Jamison Architects
Photography by Remco Photography
Anne Street Garden Villas
In collaboration with the Queensland Government, this project was a unique opportunity to challenge the conventions of social housing, and a more create more liveable, forward-thinking model. Our aim was to employ small design moves that could have a big impact, and offer a more efficient alternative to single dwelling living without sacrificing the amenity offered by freestanding homes.
Design workshops with current tenants informed our design approach, and the resulting development strives to make a positive contribution to the neighbourhood. The design prioritises pedestrian scale movement and provides opportunities to engage with the broader neighbourhood. The bulk and scale of the built form is retrained and the aesthetic responds to local contextual studies.
Small, efficient dwelling footprints kept costs down, and created space for a shared outdoor garden, which is key to both the social sustainability of the project and passive design moves across the site.
By Anna O’Gorman Architect
Photography by Christopher Frederick Jones
