Tour this white Scarborough House, immersed in nature

a white boxy house, scarborough house in australia, among wooded setting and with colourful furniture

(Image credit: Tom Ferguson)

Most architects dream of designing their own house. It took architect Stephen Collier 21 years – with the result being a new courtyard-style home at Scarborough, an hour’s drive south of Sydney. A search for a location that took five years, the path led to a modest, triangular-shaped site abutting a railway line – with a dramatic escarpment in the mix.

Tour this Scarborough house with a courtyard at its heart

Formerly a mining town, Scarborough has managed to escape the many large trophy homes springing up along the south coast. 'Most of the houses are simple so I was conscious of creating something appropriate and responding to both the scale of the nearby cottages and the site (650 square metres in area),' says Collier, who created a courtyard-style house, just perched just below the railway track. 'The trains give us that connection to Sydney’s more intense environment, making us feel less isolated,' adds Collier, who lives here with his partner.

Approximately 160 square metres in area, the Scarborough house is constructed in a steel frame with the walls clad in fibrocement – the roof in steel and the floors all tiled, with each space in a different coloured tile. Working with landscape architect Jane Irwin, the approach to the elevated home, supported on concrete columns with steel bracing, is via a meandering set of external stairs to the front door.

'The idea is that you walk straight into a series of ‘moving parts’,' says Collier. The kitchen, for example, features two separate joinery units, one in red, the other in pale blue, that can be easily moved around the kitchen bench. The central courtyard, framed by either sliding glass or timber panels, can be either completely closed or left open to the elements. The courtyard has a Teppanyaki stove for cooking as well as a Japanese-style bath. There are also two other bathrooms, one being an ensuite to the main bedroom and the second guest bathroom.

For Collier, the new house was an opportunity to explore ideas as much as to get as close as possible to nature. 'There’s the ability to both sleep and bathe under the stars.' And rather than have a set plan in the way spaces are used, they can adapt to suit the time of year. The winters in Scarborough can be chilly and often with reduced sunlight on the escarpment.

And while the house is currently set up aligned to the different coloured floor tiles, each area can be rejigged with moveable shelves and furniture, such as the Saarinen ‘Womb’ Chair easily straddling both the indoors and out. Likewise, the home’s many operable hatches, framing the eucalypts, are a continued reminder of this magical bush setting.

collierarchitects.com

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Stephen Crafti started writing on Architecture & Design in the early 1990s after purchasing a modernist 1950s house designed by Neil Montgomery. Fast forward several decades, Crafti is still as passionate and excited about seeing and writing on contemporary architecture and design, having published 50 books to date as well as writing for leading newspapers and magazines.