Daylesford Longhouse, Vic – Partners Hill
Simultaneously a home, a farm, a greenhouse and a cooking school, this is an “utterly extraordinary” home set among the vast pastoral landscape of country Victoria. Owners Ronen and Trace live at one end of the house, while their animals are housed soundly in the barn at the other. In between, there is a large climate controlled space growing everything from leafy greens to avocado trees.
“Standing within the shed’s garden gives you the unusual feeling of being simultaneously outside and inside – you could walk around the internal gardens in socks, but you’re sitting surrounded by mature trees and vines,” commented the jury that awarded this house Australian House of Year in 2019.
And at 110-metres in length end-to-end, you won’t even need to leave the house to get your daily 10,000 steps in.
Read the review of the house here.
Rent the house on Airbnb.
Glebe House, NSW – Chenchow Little
Glebe House by Chenchow Little.
Image: Peter Bennetts
Described by architect Tony Chenchow as “an exploration of volume, form and light,” this house in Sydney’s inner west makes the most of its challenging site, turning it into an opportunity to create a dramatically sculptural home.
Parabolic arches on its exterior create “Swiss-cheese-like” hollows that draw light into the interior spaces. “We use geometry to blur the experience of what’s inside and outside in a way that elongates the space. When you start slicing off corners and cutting out openings, you begin to dissolve the building,” Chenchow said.
Read the review of the house here.
Rent the house on Contemporary Hotels.
Bismarck House, NSW – Andrew Burges Architects
Bismarck House by Andrew Burges Architects
Image: Peter Bennetts
Located on a corner block in Bondi, this addition to a typical beachside semi-detached home generously opens itself to the adjacent laneway, “bringing domestic life of the house into direct relation with the energy and materiality of its laneway context,” said the 2020 Houses Awards jury, who awarded the house the winner of the House Alteration and Addition under 200-square-metres category.
The house creates social interactions with the streetscape through a large window opening from the kitchen. Privacy is created deep within the site while a series of landscaped pockets add a touch of nature to the home.
Rent the house at Bismarck House.
Invisible House, NSW – Peter Stutchbury Architecture
Invisible House by Peter Stutchbury Architecture.
Image: Michael Nicholson
Located in New South Wales’s Megalong Valley, Invisible House by Peter Stutchbury Architecture occupies a vast and ancient landscape with a “jaw-dropping” view. “Architect Peter Stutchbury has designed an appropriately wild and daring temple of a house,” Trish Croaker wrote in her review.
The house was named Australian House of the Year by the judges of the 2014 Houses Awards, and in 2016, it was one of 20 projects worldwide to receive a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Award for International Excellence.
“There is something absolutely Australian about this project, not just its connection to an undeniably spectacular setting, but also its modesty, clarity, resourcefulness and consequential delight,” said the Houses Awards jury. “Its magic is created through balance, such as the gridded rigour of the plan balanced with the fat curve of the long section, or the transparency of the simple exterior balanced with the solid, albeit sliced, nature of the interior rooms.
“This elegant building, looking out from its position nestled into the hilltop, has left us drawn to see more.”
Rent the house on Contemporary Hotels.
Rozak House, NT – Troppo Architects
Rozak House by Troppo Architects.
Image: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Designed for a retired IT specialist in 2001, the Rozak House realizes the original owner’s dream of camping in the country. The house is located on a parcel of virgin bushland on the edge of Lake Bennett in the Northern Territory. This seminal project designed by the 2014 Gold Medallist Troppo Architects comprises three rectilinear pavilions that fan out into the landscape.
The house has received numerous accolades, including an Award for Sustainable Architecture and a Commendation for Residential Buildings at the 2002 National Architecture Awards.
“The architect was challenged to produce a work poised between being an ephemeral shelter and permanent digs,” said the jury. “The result is a piece of architecture-in-the-raw in an almost surreal landscape. The house is a gem. It belongs in its landscape and appears as the right response for the needs of its owner.”
Rent the house on Airbnb.
Kunanyi House, Tas – McGlashan and Everist
Kunanyi House by McGlashan and Everist.
Image: Jonathan Wherrett
Planning a trip to Tasmania this summer? You might consider staying in a building designed by the architects of one of Australia’s most illustrious art galleries – and no, not a Fender Katsalidis “luxury den“. Rather than bed down amongst the Monads frolicking in David Walsh’s “adult playground”, try Kunanyi House on Hobart’s Mount Wellington. Built in 1969 to plans by David McGlashan of McGlashan and Everist, the house was designed at the same time as Heide II, inarguably the practice’s most famous work and arguably one of the best examples of modernist architecture in Australia.
Read the Houses Revisited story here.
Rent the house on Airbnb.
Cape Schanck House, Vic – Paul Morgan Architects
Cape Schanck House by Paul Morgan Architects.
Image: Peter Bennetts
Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula has a long history as a testing ground for radical architecture. From Robin Boyd, to Kevin Borland and other contemporaries the 1960s, to a host of contemporary architects, the often-modest commissions for small houses in this popular holiday spot have allowed many Melbourne architects an opportunity to experiment with ideas that then go on to inform their practice. Paul Morgan Architects’ Cape Schanck House sits firmly in this tradition. While the brilliant white, organic forms found in its interior lend it a vaguely space-age sensibility, this is a building firmly grounded in its site. The house sits near a rugged coastline and, much like the native tea trees that surround it, the dynamic forces found within this context – wind energy, sun movement – define its form. The house won the Australian Institute of Architects’ national award for residential architecture in 2007.
Rent the house on Airbnb.
Magney House, NSW – Glenn Murcutt
Magney House by Glenn Murcutt.
Image: Michael Nicholson
One of the most famous houses in Australian architecture, by Australia’s most renowned architect (and its only Pritzker-winner) is for rent. By you. For a holiday.
Eurobodalla National Park, which surrounds the house on three sides, is also apparently quite nice.
Rent the house on Airbnb.
Ooi House, WA – Kerry Hill Architects
Ooi House by Kerry Hill Architects.
Image: Peter Bennetts
Bali – La Porchetta, Billabong-clad teens drowning themselves in Bintang, and, tragically, the increasing over-development of what were once pristine beaches. Why bother? Well, you might bother if you were lucky enough to have a few nights booked far from the madding crowd in Alila Ubud, the hilltop resort designed by Kerry Hill Architects. Alternatively, you could forget about Bali altogether and pop over to Margaret River, to this Kerry Hill-designed house listed on the Australian Institute of Architects register of ‘Nationally Significant 20th Century Architecture.’ As the Institute notes in its description, the house boasts a calm refinement, ‘where every junction and element has been thoughtfully and carefully resolved’.
Read the Houses Revisited story here.
Rent the house on Airbnb.
Berman House, NSW – Harry Seidler and Associates
Berman House by Harry Seidler and Associates.
Image: Harry Seidler and Associates
This house in the New South Wales Southern Highlands is one of Australia’s most iconic homes with its curved roof lines and a dramatic, cantilevering balcony.
The home is arranged across two levels: a bedroom wing perched higher on the rocky cliff, while the glazed living pavilion is perched above the sandstone boulders over the Wingecarribee River gorge.
Berman House was completed in 1999 and received the Blacket Prize from the NSW chapter of Australian Institute of Architects in 2001.
Rent the house on Contemporary Hotels.
