Sunny House is a new family home located on the undulating terrain of Brisbane’s northern suburbs. The site’s south facing slope offered panoramic views over the street, while the rear yard’s northern orientation was ideal for outdoor occupation. Our response to the site was to preserve a large part for landscape and outdoor activity, offering meaningful benefits to the resident family. This was achieved by using a compact building mass, organising functionality and materials as a vertical stack.

A four-metre site fall suggested a heavyweight base anchored to the ground, tucking car accommodation into the slope. Clinker brick walls emphasise mass, and extend out from the house into the landscape. The middle level contains shared spaces, emphasising connectivity to the rear landscape, and towards the panoramic view at the front. This suggested an open centre cleaving a gap between the brick base and a lightweight top-level spanning above. In contrast with the base, the upper façade emphasises lightness by acting like a three-sided wrapper around the interior, leaving the fourth side to reveal dark inner surfaces.
Sunny House is situated between a group of dull contemporary houses to the east, and on the west a well-designed English Revival house - a style favoured in affluent suburbs of the 1930s. Our design demonstrates what we value in this context through the selective reinterpretation of elements from the English Revival neighbour. The mottled terracotta and brick seen there encouraged the development our own custom brick blend, exploring our interest in the natural irregularity that bricks can possess. Like the neighbouring house, white painted upper walls make a crisp contrast against the earthy tones.
The geometric language of our design takes cues from several elements of the neighbouring dwelling. A stepping brick gable at its street façade has been reinterpreted in an entry wall with a descending stepped edge. The neighbour’s arched entry has been extrapolated on our site to create a new version of the suburban arched garage, with the circular geometry reappearing both externally and internally in detail elements. A subtle but unique element in the neighbouring house was the interwar ‘catslide roof’ at the entry, where a steep straight edge shallows out to a curve. This provided a clue to how our upper façade could reconcile the unconventional section of the interior it conceals. The result is that Sunny House and its English Revival neighbour both exhibit strong individual identities, but these are strengthened by a civic interplay.
While the building’s exterior has a bold presence in the streetscape, our design process places importance on choreographing a sequence of human scaled experiences, starting at the street interface and continuing through the house and site. Cut-brick house numbers and a custom letterbox mark the site entry, leading past patterned garage doors to brick landscape walls that frame a pond and offer places for sitting.

A yellow alcove marks the entry into the house interior, followed by a dark coloured stairwell that starts the slow reveal of the view to the city. Reaching the middle communal level, the scale expands and tone lightens, and after passing a filtering screen, the dramatic outlook is fully revealed from the centre of the space. Movement through the building reveals a considered set of contrasting characteristics, contributing towards ensuring the experience is not dominated by the outlook towards the city. Constructed elements are thought of as a frame for complimenting it, drawing the view through the house towards the back of the site.

The middle level of Sunny House is the setting for shared family activities. The compact internal footprint allows family members to maintain a connection with each other, however the efficient size has not restricted the variety of experiences offered. The layout is quartered into territories with differences in both character and interactions between occupants and site. On the eastern half are cooking and dining spaces that are shared with visitors. These are characterised by connectivity, with circulation flowing from front to back, linking people with the distant southern view and the landscape at the rear of the site. In contrast, the spaces on the western half are mainly for casual occupation by the family, consisting of a lounge, study and children’s play space, plus concealed service spaces. These areas are framed with more containment, giving these the character of retreat spaces.
The response to the site topography guides the character of the spaces as they are subdivided in the other direction. The middle level’s northern half is anchored to the site with a honed concrete floor that continues externally to the terrace via large stacking doors. In contrast, the spaces on the southern half emphasise their elevated position to reinforce the prospect. Sydney Blue Gum plywood is used on the flooring and extends up cabinetry, where its lightweight quality is highlighted through the use of cutouts and fine expressed edges. Each quarter of this level takes on a character based on the two design themes arising from its plan position. What could have been a large open area with a singular feeling, has been broken down to a more human scale with contrasts that enliven daily use.
Spatial variety and natural light from above were client goals for the main communal spaces, but this conflicted with the requirement to position these on the middle level where they could open to the rear landscape. Our sectional strategy solved this by pushing the bedrooms above to one side of the building and introducing pop-up skylights alcoves to the other. This is an example of how our design process prioritises internal spatial strategies ahead of external form making. The skylight alcoves explore several key themes, firstly by utilising natural light to animate the spaces with changing qualities over the course of the day. They also presented an opportunity to reintroduce the circular geometry used elsewhere in the project, helping to stitch together key detail elements.
The skylight pop-ups are also part of a suite of small volumes throughout the house that embed emotion through colour, a yellow that felt right on Sunny Avenue. The largest is the stairwell leading to the upper level, where a peekaboo shutter from a child’s bedroom adds interactivity to the abstract arrangement of colour and geometry. The design’s composition of volume types also includes dark transition spaces found in areas like the entry stair and upper hallway. The later divides the top floor into clear zones for children and parents, creating a sense of independent territories through perception rather than adding excess area.
From the middle level of the house, a north facing covered area starts the transition between interior and rear yard. The brick path and external wall suggest a masonry aperture that is passed through to reach a lawn framed within the landscape. Beyond this, a sunken garden allows another brickwork frame to create an elevated pool enclosure without a traditional pool fence arrangement. A strong visual link is established from the pool, through the house and beyond to the horizon. Despite the significant fall across the site, this arrangement allows family life to flow easily between indoors and outdoors, providing a sense of liveliness and connectivity. Addressing this landscape space is the rear facade of the house, which maintains the same diagrammatic arrangement used on the streetscape elevation, and a series of brickwork blades on the side elevation that balance geometric rigour with intricate colour variations.
Sunny House is a reflection of our belief that architecture shouldn’t be restricted to either current trends or the characteristic elements of any past style. By responding to the project’s setting while also drawing on lessons from multiple styles and eras, a building can feel like it was meant to be. At the overall scale, the design of Sunny House aims for simplicity with a touch of boldness, providing a framework for the richness that occurs within at the human scale. As the design developed, we created a kit of parts: bold expressive elements that could be deployed strategically through small-scale components of the house, exploring themes like colour, shape, pattern and texture. As residents and visitors experience the building over time, these themes become familiar, developing a deeper understanding of the house’s character.

Level G Plan / Level 1 Plan / Level 2 Plan

Cross Section / Street Elevation



Axonometric View
Details


Project: Sunny House
Architect: Cloud Dwellers
Project Team: Jason Haigh, Cherissa McCaughey
Interior Designer: Diana Azzarello
Builder: Solido Builders
Landscape Architect: Larc Collective
Structural Engineer: Blueprint Structural Design
Photographer: Andy Macpherson Studio
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Design commencement: December 2014
Construction commencement: November 2017
Construction completion: April 2019
Internal Area: 220sqm including garage





Materials


Brickwork: ‘Regal’ Extruded bricks by Claypave in blended colours
Cladding: ‘Axon’ and ‘Hardiflex’ fibre cement by James Hardie
Aluminium Windows: G. James 048 series
Timber windows and doors: Merbau by Allkind Joinery and Glass
Window Hood: Folded metal by Heka
Metal Roofing / Cladding: Spandek profile metal sheet by Lysaght
Gutter: ‘Edge’ profiled metal eaves gutter by Stratco
Skylights: Velux Garage Door: Laser cut aluminium plate
Letterbox: Custom with merbau face panel and colorbond capped lid
Metal Pool fence: 'Wattyl' by ARC
Pavers: Claypave
Timber flooring: Big River Sydney Blue Gum plywood
Concrete: Honed and exposed aggregate finish concrete
Linings: Plasterboard, Sydney Blue Gum veneer plywood
Paint: Dulux by Worldly Painters
Internal Lighting: 'Lucciola' pendants and surface mount lights by Vistosi,
'Ball' wall light by Fransden.
External Lighting : Dasco post top sphere lights, Bright Green, SAL, Caribou
Door Hardware: Pitella
Tiles: Appiani mosaics from Classic Ceramics; Terra from Elite Bathware and Tiles
Kitchen benchtops: Quantum Quartz
Cabinetry fronts: Two pack paint and Sydney Blue Gum veneer plywood by O.J. Kitchens and Joinery
Appliances: Siemens, Miele
Rangehood : Sirius
Basins: Duravit
Plumbing fixtures: Brodware