Balanced Haven – ONE W by Paul Clout Design
Despite the limitations of its site, ONE W emerges as a generous coastal home with a clear outward aspect that draws on a sensory connection to the natural elements. Paul Clout Design combines modernist influences with an openness that encourages movement, integrating key moments of connection among more retreat-like and intimate areas of reprieve.
Holding several spaces that balance retreat and togetherness, ONE W needed to ensure its multiple levels could accommodate both larger and smaller groups without feeling empty nor too grand. Located on a tight allotment in Noosaville, the home stacks its program over several floors, with an open stair connecting the levels and bringing light and air into the centre of the home. Integrating a simplicity and feeling of slowing down was key. As a result, the flow between areas is intentionally seamless, with a sequence of spaces that unwind from one into the other, encouraging an immersion within the equally expansive and impressive views.
Paul Clout Design wanted to make sure the house exuded an effortless ease, where an appreciation of the beauty in nature is able to be relished amid a refined and considered contemporary home offering. Intended to be more than just a place of shelter, the house interacts with the existing streetscape humbly and steps back from the site boundary to create a softened buffer between private and public domains. With a muted palette and featuring natural textures and tones, the residence exudes a spa-like calm. Sitting on a narrow and linear site, the structure adopts a clear formal and functional response that sees a striking silhouette emerge. The integration of a swimming pool and outdoor areas represents a stroke of playfulness within the planning.
The home’s planning is explored through an experimental process, which sees the main living spaces sit atop the structure. As a means to maximise views and create a clear separation between the street and the house, this positioning overlays a feeling of floating above the world. With¬¬ modernist influences informing an openness and lack of separation between zones, the surrounding views and connection to water, light and air become a key part of how the home is experienced.
With a muted palette and featuring natural textures and tones, the residence exudes a spa-like calm.
Both timeless and site specific, ONE W overlays an important connection among people. The unconventional planning and programming of spaces reverses tradition, seeing Paul Clout Design focus on an individual response instead of taking the path more commonly paved.