Contemporary additions to a classic brick beach house in Little Cove, Noosa, Queensland

Our clients purchased a late 70’s brick beach house in Little Cove for a subtropical retreat from the cool southern climate. The house was located on a beautiful site that backed onto the Noosa National Park and surfing beaches. Although well constructed at the time, the existing dark brown brick residence had visually dated quite badly and did not take the best advantage of the fantastic site that backed onto a subtropical rainforest. The owner's brief was to modernise the house while retaining as much of the existing building structure as possible.

One of the challenges with the existing house is that it did not take full advantage of the beautiful location backing onto the Noosa National Park. The rear of the house was essentially a solid brick wall looking onto this gorgeous view. We proposed carving out new openings in the rear wall so that bedrooms and bathrooms would look out onto this very private, serene landscape. Initially, the house was quite dark internally, so we pushed a series of timber-lined light wells up through the roof. This allowed natural light to flow in from a high level and from the new openings in the brick walls.

The other significant challenge in modernising the existing house was transforming the front street elevation. The original house had an unflattering rough dark brown brick facade with two equally mission brown garage roller doors. A separate consideration was that the street elevation faced east, and the hot morning sun would blast through the kitchen and dining windows in summer. Our approach was to render the brick in a natural cement finish and design a beautiful timber screen in front of the original facade. This lightweight hardwood structure resulted in a refined modern elevation to the street, providing sun protection and privacy for the internal spaces.

One of the new house's most unique and delightful design elements is the semi-outdoor bathrooms that look out onto the national park. The original house had an aged light brown plastic shower unit on the back deck, where you could shower outside looking into the forest. The owners loved this feature, so we designed the new bathrooms as hardwood boxes with copper fittings primarily open onto the private subtropical rainforest.

Photography: Jared Fowler