Coogee House III
Country / Gadigal and Bidjigal
"The smell of sun-dried bricks after summer rain" became a poetically charged starting point for this project, which is an exploration of domesticity, nostalgia, childhood and family intimacy.
Built / 2025
Photography / David Chatfield
Interior Design / Genevieve Hromas
Nestling into a fig-lined street, the architecture responds to a suburban site by privileging landscape and generosity over display. The form and palette are driven by a nostalgic interpretation of the Sydney suburban – leafy shadows tracking over red brick walls, gabled roof forms in green canopies, direct and durable construction detailing. The house is large for a large family, but its expression and spaces are intimate. While the house eschews the heroic in most instances, in one moment of exuberance, 23 corbelled brick arches step out as if opening arms upwards to sun and trees at the north of the site.
It is a private world, where the modest street address belies the variety of nested forms and surprising volumes in the interior.
The interior is underpinned by a distinctly female presence: confident, intuitive and practical, expressed through strength rather than ornament, and care rather than control. Nothing is precious, but everything is considered.
