Stradbroke House

Project type - New build

Celebrating the nostalgia of camping in a light and expressive holiday home

Stradbroke House was designed in collaboration with Gabriel and Elizabeth Poole and built with a clever group of fabricators. Our client wanted a holiday home on South Stradbroke Island where she can enjoy time with friends and family, especially her four grandsons who she wanted “to experience uncomplicated but comfortable camping.”

 The expressive, exuberant house comprises two steel-framed pavilions linked by a breezeway. The single-storey western pavilion has an open-plan living, kitchen and dining area extending out to a northern verandah. The two-storey eastern pavilion accommodates the bedrooms and bathrooms. On the ground floor, the exterior walls of the twin rumpus rooms fold down to create four canvas-roofed sleeping pods that evoke the experience of camping. Upstairs, three bedrooms are connected to the ground floor via an internal staircase and an external water slide.

The house is constructed with a lightweight, custom-steel fabrication. Portal frames have raking arms that extend up and beyond the roof line, like tent poles. The verandah awning stretches across the deck to leaning steel columns with built-in hammock seating suspended over the landscape.