Location: Sydney, Australia.

Architect: SJB.

Sydney Harbour Residence is a contemporary house that sits comfortably on a historic and iconic Sydney harbour-edge site. The house is grand without being ostentatious and has a predominant feeling of a residence within a landscape or garden setting. The playful roof form helps to give definition to the spaces beneath, and each peak and trough to the roof compresses and stretches the spatial quality of the room below, allowing the architecture to create intimacy and scale where required. The glazing has been designed to completely stack away, ensuring a sense of openness and connection to the external environment. The floor finishes are contiguous, ensuring the internal and external areas feel connected and breakdown the barrier that the glazing line represents. The outdoor rooms are reclaimed as important living spaces, and the living spaces are classic and grand, warm and inviting, but also talk to a sense of optimism and vision. The material used in the residence is soft and comfortable, and the textured walls constructed of natural materials lend the architecture a sense of quality, warmth, and familiarity. A tennis court has been accommodated into the terracing of the landscape, ensuring that it is not only an excellent place to play tennis, but is also scaled so as to not spoil the feeling of the garden setting. The design of this space has been integral to the consideration of fencing to the court, which has been achieved without it becoming a barrier to the view or the sense of space.