Brilliant build: Architect hides an oasis inside deceptive Queensland home

This contemporary, architect-designed house is a long way from your average beach shack.

In fact, it’s not even particularly close to the beach, sitting up high, with spectacular vistas, on what was once farming land, in the tightly-held affluent Brisbane suburb of Brookfield, just 15 kilometres from the city centre.

But award-winning Noosa-based architect Tim Ditchfield, renowned for his high-end coastal work, has created a modern, luxurious interpretation of the traditional beach house amid the quilted landscape of large acreages.

The house appears modest from the street long and low with a simple pitched roof and fibro-cement sheet cladding, all characteristic of your typical beachside abode. A lower second level, built into the sloping block, is hidden.

The front garden, too, has a tropical-beach feel with palm-like pandanus trees, native grasses and rolling lawn. The fence bears the name of the property – Lani Mauna, Hawaiian for “mountain reaching heaven”.

“It’s like a tropical oasis,” Queensland Sotheby’s International agent Douglas Tonkin says. “When you walk through the home, you feel like you’re on holiday.”

At the same time, there’s a strong design sensibility at work, lifting the property above the ordinary. The fibro-cement sheets, for instance, are covered with narrow timber battens, allowing daylight to generate shadow- play and texture.

There’s a strong modernist design influence, too, which wouldn’t be out of place in the Hollywood Hills or Palm Springs, in California – just as the owners had wanted.

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“I adopted all the principles for this property as if I were building it on the coast,” says Ditchfield, who had also designed a similar house on the Sunshine Coast for the owners.

Step inside and the place blooms. Everything is cool and casual. The design is light and minimalist but, importantly, open, so indoors and outdoors merge seamlessly.

Sliding glass doors retract fully, connecting a generous open-plan living/kitchen area to a mesh-screened outdoor living space. 

This leads on to what Ditchfield calls the project’s “hero” – an elevated infinity-edge lap pool, sitting above a discrete lower-ground unit, which is perfect for kids. “The pool drove the design,” Ditchfield says.

Perched on a ridge, the house offers a sweeping panorama of Mount Coot-tha and Brisbane City.

Wine cellar, cool room and fireplace only add to the sense of easy living, as do high-end fixtures and finishes such as the Miele ovens, Bose speakers and Bisazza glass pool tiles. 

The home will go to auction on February 24.

See more of 9 Royston Street, Brookfield here. Download the Domain app for more contemporary Queensland builds.