What do you do if your home needs to deal with lots of visitors, but also needs to work for just one or two of you as well? This new beach house in Torquay, designed by buck&simple needed to be flexible enough to host anywhere from one lone surfer up to groups of 20. The answer was to focus living areas towards the outdoors so the home could expand outside, or contract indoors depending on how many people it needs to house...
Built in a new subdivision in the popular surf town, the design of Torquay House is inspired by the classic Kiwi bach (pronounced batch), with raw, honest materials and living areas opening up to the outdoors to make the most of the natural world. Looking inwards towards an internal courtyard not only allows the home to expand to host more guests, it also creates a central oasis, the perfect way to create privacy in the suburban neighbourhood.
"We arranged the building blocks of 'little house', 'big house', and entertainment deck, to enclose a north-facing courtyard, the social and environmental heart of the holiday home", explain buck&simple. The separate areas of the home means part of it can be closed off for smaller groups or can open up to host many.
Materials in the home are raw and understated. Plywood and timber and copper details are combined with concrete blocks, burnished concrete flooring. Outside painted weatherboards are paired with an earth-coloured roof tile to help the home feel relaxed. Upstairs there's a more subdued palette which is designed to help you relax and slow down. Materials are chosen to be low-maintenance and get better with age so visitors can focus on the surf and not on upkeep on the house.
"Landscaping plays an integral part in connecting the house to its natural setting, with both soft planting and hard surfaces selectively used to create nuanced interweaved outdoor spaces. A timber screen frames a densely planted private courtyard, containing an outdoor shower and surfboard quiver, to create an intimate and practical surf utilities area."
Torquay House is the schmickest surf shack we've ever seen, but its designed to perfectly suit the needs of the owners as a low-stress home-away-from-home and is bound to host numerous memorable beach holidays.
