Culburra Beach House

Once you’ve visited beautiful Culburra, on the NSW south coast, the likelihood is you’ll never forget. “After people have had a holiday they usually want to buy a beach house down here. And that’s where we help them out,” says architect, Colin Irwin.

One of Colin’s latest projects is Culburra Beach House. “The house connects to water in every aspect, so we’ve got the ocean, we’ve got the pool in the middle and we have the river behind it. The pool was to be the focal point of the whole house so in this project we’ve literally wrapped the house around the pool and embraced it.”

Sustainability was extremely important to the clients. In fact, they stressed that they did not want the house to have air-conditioning. “We have the ability to open up the house as much as we want and, on those odd occasions when there’s no breeze at all, we have ceiling fans in every room.”

In consultation with window and door fabricators, Hanlon Windows Australia, the decision was made to combine sliding doors on the ground floor with a FlowTHRU™ drain system. “What that does is accommodate any of the winds and rain loads that fall on that door and protects the indoors from any ingress of water. That product worked well because it’s totally integrated with the sliding door system. The two are meant to work together. They provide a beautiful, flush detail. They’re safe to walk on, they look good and perform well in extreme circumstances,” says Colin.

“There’s no doubt that the windows and the doors are a very strong feature of this house…the way that they can open and stack back and be taken out of the way when the weather’s good, it makes you feel like you’re living on a verandah.”