Cliff House was designed for an experienced landscape architect who owned this fabulous site. The site is located at the edge of the narrow neck of land between the bend in the Swan River and Leighton Beach with the Indian Ocean beyond. The site is on the edge of a limestone cliff face that leads directly down into the river, providing wonderful uninhibited views down to the river and out over the river.
The house was designed to accommodate my retiring clients, while also serving the coming and going of their adult children. Given that the site spanned two street frontages, we designed a house with dual addresses, one for the parents and the other for the children. The house gives opportunity to either connect or disconnect between parents and adult children.
As the house is seen from a distance down the length of the river, the house has been designed to have an identity upon the top of the cliff. The building visually comes out of the cliff through the use of limestone as the base material to the exterior of the building. Articulated into a series of components, it is the terracotta shingle roofscape that provides the house with its identity, holding all of the elements together.
The external textural materials continue inside where the house reflects the feel of the locality of North Fremantle.