Connected Kit Home – Bundeena House by Tribe Studio Architects

Reshaping the kit home typology, Bundeena House is an experimental and duplicatable template for the holiday family escape. Tribe Studio Architects forms a series of connected zones around a central outdoor courtyard space as an expression of an indoor and outdoor life and the ideal retreat.

Located in coastal Bundeena, the same-named home echoes the lightness and temporary nature of the typical holiday houses that once were made from found timber lengths of washed up and discarded boats. While innovation and accessibility to materiality has made bounded progressions, there still exists a connection between the feeling of a less permanent home belonging in a remote location. Taking cues from this and other contextual surrounding references, Bundeena House is intended as a prototype to be replicated across differing locations. The open heart of the home, expressed as the outdoor courtyard, becomes the visual and ventilated connector, ensuring all spaces have access to natural light and air as a reminder of the home as a place of escape. Tribe Studio Architects combines sustainable principles with a nod to the modest fisher cottage, in proposing a reimagined kit home.

The use of robust materials ensures a longevity and also the required hardiness to stand up in non-urban conditions.

Built by Ballast Construction and George Payne and engineering by Cantilever, Bundeena House sits as a singular-story home that considers the need for a duplicatable home to be both energy and economically efficient. The design ensures that it can be built by local tradespeople in the remote areas a holiday home might take form. Its concrete slab ensures the increased thermal mass underfoot can retain heat during winter and keep the house cool during summer, while the use of certified plantation timber reduces the environmental footprint. Orientation and overhangs ensure solar heat gain can be controlled, full-width operable façade element then allow for a cross flow of ventilation and systems are integrated to collect rainwater for use both inside and outside for irrigation.

The formal arrangement on site relies a simplicity in construction methodology and with a minimal palette to reduce waste. Underlying the principles of the home is a considered thoughtfulness, to ensure the kit home can be architecturally articulated, refined and also socially and environmentally conscious. The use of robust materials ensures a longevity and also the required hardiness to stand up in non-urban conditions. Landscape design by Christopher Owen sees native species fill the courtyard and surround the home, further reinforcing the low maintenance nature. Bringing together laminated veneer lumber (LVL), Australian blackbutt, structural ply and concrete, a natural brick plinth for the fireplace adds a nod to the familiar.

The formal arrangement on site relies a simplicity in construction methodology and with a minimal palette to reduce waste.

Through an honest and raw approach, Tribe Studio Architects’ Bundeena House is conceived from a place of simplicity – where it intends to remain.