Perched atop a beachside cliff on the Sunshine Coast in Australia sits the Stealth house, a shifty piece of architecture that plays to both the dark rainforest behind it, and the vast ocean in front of it. Teeland Architects were presented with a rare opportunity: design a 21st century dream home on one of the most ecologically diverse, stunningly serene pieces of land in the world. It’s an opportunity they didn’t let waste.
Approaching the house takes you through a dense rainforest before you emerge with a water view and the massive tapered entry of the house itself. The dark earth tones wrap all unglazed portions of the building’s facades, a choice that was meant to blur lines with the surrounding landscape. This architectural camouflage strengthens the already taught symbiosis between structure and surrounding.
It’d be enough to justify the precarious positioning of the home on the edge of the cliff based solely on the fact that it looks bloody cool. But, there happens to be an entirely practical reason for doing so. The weak soils on the cliff made it almost impossible for the project to be realized at all. The architects and engineers found a decent plot of land and were able to anchor the home back to solid rock, effectively creating a cantilever that couldn’t have worked by simply using columns. Once again the resulting form is a direct response to nature’s criteria.
Public spaces such as the kitchen, dining and living areas are organized towards the front of the house, where large glazed fenestration opens towards an exterior deck that teters over the cliff face. The views from these spaces are spectacular and focus on a 180 degree look to the ocean. The private quarters are hidden in the back, oriented towards the more intimate views of the rainforest and an adjacent creek. It’s a successful yin-yang that sums up the opposing natural forces presented by the site.
The Stealth house is a structure that compliments itself. All pieces work well together so as reveal themselves as not pieces at all, but a unified object placed delicately and appropriately within its surroundings.
Architects: Teeland Architects
Photography: Jared Fowler
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