Vacation home in Australia is a slice of heaven
You would never know Beach Slice, a modern vacation home, recycles many of its building materials. Located an hour’s drive from Melbourne, Australia, it’s the perfect place to call home. Steffen Welsch Architects designed the home to be a triangular little slice of holiday heaven, or the perfect place to retire.
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Beach Slice uses passive solar design, heating and cooling to achieve a 7.9 Stars NatHERS energy rating. Additionally, a 6.1 kilowatt solar power system from EnviroGroup powers the home.
Related: Black and White Beach House employs climate-ready architecture
Furthermore, building materials were reused from other projects. This includes recycled bricks from The Brick Recyclers, reused timber for floor boards and double-glazed doors and windows from recycled spotted gum. Moreover, the home features an electric vehicle charging point.
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The main living area is on one side of the triangle layout. It is flanked by a wall of windows that let in heat and light to the main living space. The kitchen and dining area steps down into a sunken living room. Two bedrooms and a master suite sit in the private side of the home, all unobtrusively resting in the natural landscape around the home. It’s a great example of quiet architecture, according to the designers, which resists the urge to push luxury lifestyle or architecture in a vacation home.
“We intended Beach Slice to be ‘Architecture as Background, a phrase coined by the Viennese architect Hermann Czech,” said the designers. “Czech said, ‘Architecture shall not impose on you. The user must not notice it, it should appear to have always been like this.’”
True to their word, the designers achieved their goal. Beach Slice appears to be a vestige of mid-century modern’s more subtle designs, which fits into the topography of their site and achieves simple lifestyle goals. You would never know the wood is finished in plant oils and that the windows are designed to be passive solar. Everything about Beach Slice is what a vacation home should be: relaxed and at peace within itself and the surrounding nature.