The owners wanted to transform this beautiful site into a stage for enhancing the spiritual side of life.

We faced two significant challenges. First, the small site is only accessible from the water or down a steep narrow sandstone path that is best described as a goat track and secondly, local council regulations only allowed a building platform of 6m x 4m.

The solution to the size challenge was to design an elegant space able to perform a range of primary functions—specifically as a kitchen, a bathroom, a dining room, a lounge and a bedroom plus a deck.

This required that key elements such as the dining room table, the double bed and the lounge fold seamlessly and effortlessly away into the two fixed walls–and the two retractable walls to slide away to allow the space to expand out over the water. This required both innovation and highly skilled craftsmanship from site supervisor Peter Lloyd and his team to achieve such intricacy and precision. All in an elegant, discreet manner.

As the site was inaccessible to vehicles, all building equipment and materials had to be brought in by barge and then only on right tides—even if it was 4am. The experienced building team handled these challenges with ease and good humour.

The overall finish combines natural zinc, blackbutt timber recycled from the demolition of an adjacent jetty, off-form concrete, teak marine ply, stainless steel and tallowwood into a beautifully compromised space that has been described as ‘an exquisitely crafted jewellery box’.

It has been a most rewarding and satisfying project to design and then see executed so beautifully.

It was a joy working with John, Peter and the Bellevarde team.