Project: Y House
Architecture: Andrew Simpson Architects
Project Team: Andrew Simpson, Simona Falvo, Danielle Mileo, Ryan Bate, Michelle Phillips
Builder: Camson Homes
Location: Wye River, Victoria, Australia
Year: 2019
Photo Credits: Peter Bennetts
This beachside house was designed and constructed following devastating bushfires along the south coast of the Otway ranges in Christmas 2015. The site is located on the steep hills between Wye River and Separation Creek with sublime 270 degree views across Bass Straight.
As a beach house shared between three generations of the one family, the brief required a highly flexible approach to family living that allowed for different configurations of social groups while also providing scope for individuals to enjoy their “time out”. The floor plan is configured as a Y-shape to allow for three separate but contiguous wings, corresponding to the three age-groups of the family. Each wing is oriented to a distinct experience of the surrounding landscape: The beach of Wye River, the beach of Separation Creek and the summit of the surrounding hillside which also doubles as the entry to the house.
Though spectacular, the site brought with it a series of onerous constraints which required incorporation with the final scheme: a lack of mains sewer required an on-site waste-management system including dispersal field; the site suffered from potential landslip, which required significant piling into bedrock; and it was classified as partially Flame Zone and BAL40 which had significant implications for glazing, window fabrication and cladding systems.
