Cape Schanck House

Location: Cape Schanck, Victoria, Australia

Description: This beach house on the coast south of Melbourne, Victoria, is located to enjoy expansive ocean views from the top of a very steep sloping site in the middle of a golf course. The house looks northwest along the beaches of the Mornington Peninsula and southwest to Cape Schanck. It is pushed up above the dense cover of tea-tree with the single slot of a ribbon window peeping over the tree line.

The orthogonal black form is very clear and simple, but there is something odd to it. The box tube is twisted in section, the cladding raked, the lower windows cranked, the chimney emerging from the wall on the diagonal. The house looks nothing like a house, but rather like an object flying in from space and rotating along its long axis as it is about to land. The house is a dynamic enigma in this windswept setting.