A Coastal Beacon – Lantern House by Herbst Architects

By day, the Lantern House by Herbst Architects reads as a dark rectilinear form, the texture of the timber battens that clad the exterior serving on to emphasise its simplicity. By night, the home lives up to its name, with light glowing softly from within through the battens lending the design an entirely other dimension.

At the start of the design process, the architects were faced with a steep site capturing magnificent coastal and ocean views. The brief was to create a permanent home for a couple with no children, with a guest accommodation wing for visitors from overseas. To the east of the site, oriented toward the views, a cut for a building had already been made. Rather than follow the direction of this previous site cut, Herbst instead chose to stretch the living spaces and main bedroom along the contour of the land projecting forward, leaving the previously cut platform open to create the primary outdoor area as a sheltered space from the prevailing katabatic winds, orientated to north and west for afternoon and evening sun.

The home is divided into two levels, with the upper level reserved for guest accommodation, and the main house occupying the lower level. This divided program represents an appropriate response to the brief – where a holiday home might seek elevation at all costs, a permanent home on such an exposed, steep site benefits from a greater sense of groundedness and protection. A sense of being both being cantilevered out from the site and also tucked beneath the volume above balances the otherwise expansive openness to the view created in the living space, in which glazing on both sides opens the to the view in front, and to the courtyard to the back.

At the start of the design process, the architects were faced with a steep site capturing magnificent coastal and ocean views.

Eschewing the more typical light palette of a coastal home, the Lantern House embraces dark tones both inside and out. Just as the dark palette of the exterior forms allows the view to take precedence (and, once darkness falls, the light to become the primary design focus) the dark interior also draws the eye outward to the ocean beyond. A continuous window seat runs the length of the elongated living, dining and kitchen volume, framing the view in one continuous panorama. Balancing the sheer scale of this view, the dark-stained timber that lines the interior also contributes a sense of warmth and creates an atmosphere of protection amongst the coastal elements. Brass highlights within the kitchen joinery create a vibrant contrast against the dark palette and also recall the soft glow of the house at night. The materiality of brass is continued throughout the bathrooms and other joinery, creating a tranquil sense of continuity throughout the home.

A dark and subtle form emerging from the site, the Lantern House makes its own mark and its presence felt through the elemental quality of the light that shines from within as darkness falls. Balancing subtlety and intimacy with expansive openness to the landscape at large, the Lantern House is a refined and intriguing permanent home above the ocean.