My thinking on a beach house is that it needs to be a pretty elementary form of living, different from what you’d have in a city home. So, it was always our intention to create a pavilion that could handle the knocks and not require too much attention, care, cleaning or maintenance. It’s designed so my wife and I can roll up and stay for the weekend or a week, then roll on out again.
The basis of the design is an exposed blockwork shelter with a deck. The kitchen and bathroom are tucked behind sliding corrugated panels at the back, while the living is all out the front.
Because we don’t sleep in it – that’s what the tents are for – we had it consented as a “non-habitable dwelling”, the same you’d need for a bus shelter or an agricultural building. That helped me to get the raw nature of the pavilion over the line with council and meant it didn’t require insulation, and I could have exposed services and zero-cavity construction.
It was created for summer, so the roof was designed to take the sting out of the sun and collect the rainwater, rather than insulate the place. We’ve used canvas sides instead of solid walls (the stripes are an homage to old family tents) that can be opened individually depending on which way the wind is coming in. On really hot days, we roll them all up and push the pivot windows on the back concrete wall open to let the breeze flow through. I made the windows from a 16mm polycarbonate, and you crank them open using these old tōtara fence battens I found washed up on the beach over the years.
When it does get cold, we have the biofuel fireplace, a chopped-off concrete pipe retrofitted with an ethanol fire. It doesn’t need to be flued as its only byproduct is water vapour, so it’s essentially an open fire inside the house and it’s amazing how much warmth is created and retained by the canvas. If you were out in the depths of winter, you may be a bit chilly, but we’re not around to find out.
There were a few hurdles along the way, like beginning the groundwork only to discover that the spring up the hill tracks a lot of water across the site, so we spent some time working out how to redirect that. Ultimately, I created a covered drainage trench that carries it down to water the plants in my wife’s beautiful garden. Also, despite our best efforts, the tent interiors are already covered in mould, so my next move will be to construct a little hut to replace them and possibly a second pavilion with two sleeping rooms over the water tank on perpendicular access from the main form.
It’s a pretty polarising design. Sitting beside the golf course, we’re very visible and surrounded by large houses that make our place look like their garden shed. But that’s the thing; they are houses, and I don’t think that’s necessarily what you need by the beach.
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