2025 Gallery

Blok Three Sisters is an inventive design that finds a compelling balance between pragmatism and ambition. Resourceful in materials and efficient in plan, the design looks to the past to recall what makes a great holiday house, while broadening the possibilities of prefabrication as an alternative construction method that is better equipped for our future. The project is the middle dwelling in a trio of units designed for sisters who have holidayed on the site since childhood. A single beach house in a state of disrepair has been replaced with three new residences, permitting the next generations of the same family to make their own memories here. Prefabrication was selected as the most appropriate construction method for a location where access to materials and labour is limited, and as a strategy to minimise disruption and streamline on-site construction on a fragile coastal site. The units are arranged side by side, affording each one comparable amenity, with a scale that is congruous with the neighbourhood of predominantly single residences. A simple flip in the plan of one unit achieves subtle variation in the facade, gently disguising its modularity. Battened screens, fibre cement sheeting and a two-tone palette of white and pale blue further assimilate the project into its setting. Inside, each unit provides both individual privacy and opportunities for shared living, finding ways for an extended family to live harmoniously together. A central courtyard, open to the sky, is effective in the provision of light, air and private outdoor space. Breezeways and shaded outdoor decks evoke the informality of coastal living, while a lack of enclosure is an invitation to occupants to step outside. Australia needs more exemplars of stealth density that demonstrate how our freestanding residences might gradually evolve to accommodate more dwellings, without sacrifice to individual or neighbourhood amenity. The jury felt this terrace-like, modular design was not only a successful response to this laid-back coastal setting, but also a worthy and replicable model for co-living that could be readily adapted to sites in urban and suburban settings.