A Rich Lightness – Ocean House by Georgina Jeffries
Inspired by its enviable location and outlook, Ocean House teeters over the coast below and encourages a similar lightness internally. Georgina Jeffries instils a textured and layered warmth through the interior reworking of the home, adding richness and tactile sensory cues throughout.
Situated in the popular Victorian coastal milieu of Lorne, Ocean House sees the transformation of its previous ill-considered holiday shack vernacular into a highly crafted and keenly resolved home. Like many similar homes in the area, a particular style resonates and sees the formation of repetition in both form and materiality, creating a unique coastal design language. That language then forms the character of a place. Within the existing walls of a family’s coastal retreat, the interior is reworked to conjure an elevated residential experience, looking further than the typified Australian ‘beach shack’ style to instead infuse a contemporary richness. Georgina Jeffries enhances the lightness of the home, encouraging natural light to intersect with the introduced interior layers and create a restive and disconnected place to recharge and connect with the ocean.
As a combined effort between builder Karacsay Constructions, JFJ Joinery and landscape design by Troy Fynmore, Ocean House carefully crafts key family zones to turn a focus to the ocean beyond. Like many occasional homes, a sense of flexibility is needed to ensure differing groups can use the home in a way that suits their needs, while still retaining its intended charm and warmth. Looking outward, a glazed façade allows for apertures of the Lorne Pier, Louttit Bay and Aireys Inlet Lighthouse, while the sounds of the waves crashing on rocks below becomes its own meditative soundtrack for any visit.
Throughout, a muted base binds each of the spaces and zones, adding warmth through the use of timber and textural diversity of tactile elements. Furniture, artwork and lighting all combine to add a bespoke and sculptural additions to the home, while the use of natural blues and greens bring in references of the natural. The traditional coastal aesthetic is elevated through a considered approach and infusing a formality and crispness usually not found in non-urban homes. As a representation of the owners, an embedded playfulness is encouraged throughout, with vintage and newly crafted pieces bringing an activation through colour and form and creating unexpected moments of interest.
