: : Pirates Bay House

The Pirates Bay House investigates our coastal margin and how our buildings might inform us about the true experience of our island’s landscape edge. A constrained and relatively steep site was combined with an uncomplicated brief and the whole interpreted in a dramatic but revealing building. Considerable time and thought was devoted to refining the structure and simplifying the plan. Similar to suspension bridge technology, the concept affords a ten metre suspended cantilever that invites a projected experience through the trees toward the ocean. Conceived as a platform from which to observe the breathtaking grandeur of Pirates Bay, it additionally pays homage to the eucalypt forest that fringes the site.

Approach to the building is largely dominated by structure, but once inside perception shifts to that of the landscape as a predominantly transparent main space reveals both intimate and distant views. Moonlight floods interior spaces at night. Native birds and wildlife in the surrounding trees interact with occupants and living is constantly orchestrated in sight and sound by the ever changing ocean.

The Pirates Bay House was recipient of the 2005 AIA Tasmanian Chapter Commendation for Residential Architecture.

Residential Commendation –Pirates Bay House
Jury Citation
"This holiday home is considered a bridge between wooded glade and open ocean vista, and is dramatically realized through an expressive structure. The narrow footprint pavilion with low pitched butterfly roof accentuates the seaward alignment. Access is from below some meters up the slope, ensuring the platform hovers within the mid storey vegetation.

While the building is well detailed it is the structure which compels. Here a prefabricated steel frame rests on a core filled block wall stiffened by thin steel rods, ensuring undercroft parking and access, while the over-sailing platform gestures to a tenuous occupancy on the margin between land and sea."

Photography - Brett Boardman

: : Pirates Bay House

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