Buderim
Buderim Escarpment House sits 145 metres above sea level on an escarpment overlooking the southern Sunshine Coast, with long-range views to the north-east.
A series of clear architectural moves structures arrival, movement, and outlook across the site. A solid stone wall defines the street edge and forms a contained front courtyard, mediating between public and private conditions.
A compressed entry sequence controls arrival. A single aperture frames the transition into the house and marks the shift from street to interior landscape.
The plan organises into two primary wings: a public living wing and a private sleeping wing. A central garden room connects them, acting as a spatial hinge. It opens in both directions, linking the front courtyard to the rear landscape.
At the rear, the house shifts character. The built form opens fully to the escarpment, allowing living spaces to engage directly with distant coastal views and changing light.
The private wing contains a sequence of bedrooms with individual ensuites. Each room maintains separation while preserving a visual connection to the surrounding landscape.
An H-shaped plan establishes continuous sightlines across the site, reinforcing relationships between interior rooms, courtyards, and the broader landscape.
The house relies on threshold, sequence, and direction. Compression at entry gives way to expansion, guiding movement from street to horizon.
Project details
Completed 2022
Project Type
Location
Awards
Best Individual House from $1 – $2M
Best Use of Steel in a Residential House
Floor area
Photography
Architectural Team
Design Team
Construction Team
Materials
Exploring our Options
The clients approached the project with a long-established residence on a prominent escarpment site in Buderim, which had accommodated their family for over 30 years. While the building had become spatially constrained over time, it retained a clear architectural quality characterised by modernist simplicity, generous natural light, and expansive coastal outlooks. The house also sat comfortably within the site, maintaining a low and unobtrusive presence in relation to the street. These existing qualities formed the foundation for the design approach, with a focus on retaining and amplifying the strengths of the original structure while addressing the functional requirements of a growing family. Initial design investigations considered a range of scenarios, including single and double-storey extensions as well as partial retention strategies and complete replacement options, establishing a clear framework for evaluating the relationship between existing fabric and new intervention.
Simple & Bold
The selected approach was a single-storey courtyard house, organised as a low, modernist response to the site and street context. The building is deliberately restrained from the street, where a solid stone wall defines the site edge and establishes a clear threshold condition. A single, carefully proportioned opening mediates entry into a contained courtyard, with the roof form subtly visible beyond the wall line, signalling the spatial depth of the house without fully revealing it. The internal arrangement is structured as a controlled sequence of spaces, designed to unfold gradually from entry to living areas, with the courtyard acting as the central organising element of the plan. Rather than immediate openness, the house is composed around a deliberate progression of compression and release, allowing the landscape, light and views to be experienced incrementally as one moves through the building.
