Home Tour - Bondi House by Mark Shapiro Architecture
Photography Justin Alexander
The Bondi House by Mark Shapiro Architects is a significant renovation of a semi in North Bondi, retaining only the front single storey section of the house. The house consists of 3 bedrooms, media room, open plan living, kitchen and dining, laundry, carport, new landscaping and swimming pool over two levels.
The challenge was to satisfy the client's desire for a light filled home in what is by nature a long and narrow floor plan. The solution was to insert a triangular wedge shaped courtyard deep into the floor plate, flooding it with natural northern light over the both storeys. The courtyard is landscaped with a beautiful 80 year old 'elephant's foot' tree, which had to be craned in to place.
A boomerang shaped curved steel stair completes the other half of the triangle. The sculptural stair creates a focal point at one side of the open plan space, with the lush garden a counterpoint at the opposite end. A real sense of drama is created upon entry with the entrance passageway clad in dark charcoal v-groove cladding, which curves and flows to reveal the dramatic stairwell and courtyard.
The palette of materials help to create a relaxed but sophisticated beach house aesthetic, with the v-groove theme continued outside to the white weathertex cladding. Much of the structure is on show, with exposed steelwork on the exterior and exposed floor joists in the interior, lit up with LED lights, adding to the sense of honest yet unfussy sophistication.
Completed 2018 the build was somewhat experimental with all of the joinery, glazing and flooring being imported from China, proving to be a significant cost saving measure.
