Dudley House / Bourne Blue Architecture

Architects: Bourne Blue Architecture
Location: Dudley Beach, NSW, Australia
Builder: Danny Smith
Landscape Architect: Richard Stutchbury
Sculpture: Richard Stutchbury
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Brett Boardman

Located above Dudley beach, near the city of Newcastle on the east coast of NSW, this site presented dramatic opportunities. The land slopes steeply to the North, there are views over the state forest to Dudley beach, Newcastle in the distance and the Pacific ocean.

Having recently moved to Newcastle from Sydney, the client’s brief was for a family home, that could comfortably accommodate visiting families. This is to be our client’s long term home, where their children could grow up and they could live there as long as they were able. The new house was to be light, well ventilated and able to access the various views of the site.

The brief required a certain amount of accommodation, and in order to reduce the scale of what could become quite a large building, the strategy was to divide the house into two parts, private (ie family sleeping) areas and then common (living) areas. These two wings are joined by a stairwell that passes under the pool. The courtyard and pool provide the opportunity for some external, level, sun catching space, protected from the cold winds in winter. The building steps with the land and the level closest to the garden accommodates the bedrooms. This wing changes geometry midway along it’s length to run parallel to a cliff that exists on the block.

The clients had commissioned a Landscape Architect (Richard Stutchbury), also a sculptor, to design the outdoor spaces and provide some focus works of sculpture. Richard used plant species, native to the region, with just the occasional exotic to provide a feature element. His hand hewn sculptures near the pool and in the garden, provide subtle dialogue with the architecture.