Dune House

The block is one lot back from the sand on the flat strip at Mermaid Beach, and the brief was one line long: when we open the house, we want to be outside.

So the house is one room under one roof. The gable end is glass from the floor to the ridge, with timber louvres behind the truss that close against the summer afternoon and the salt. The verandah wraps the lot, as a Queenslander's should, but it sits on the ground and steps straight down to the path through the dune.

Everything you can touch is hoop pine. Everything else is white boards, painted the same white as the iron, so the only colour left in the room is the timber and the water.