SHED HOUSE

Shed House, designed for a couple running a furniture business and their three children, embodies a seamless integration of work and domestic life. A garden courtyard is the home’s heart that unites two distinct levels in a dynamic mix of proximity, separation, flexibility, and tranquillity. The ground floor plan is a shed-like space, an open vessel between the front and back yards that can be used as both a workshop and for relaxation. A discreet staircase ascends to the upper living level, where Shed House reorganises the components of a typical four-bedroom house into a grid of nine rooms. From the imposed order, juxtaposed with natural phenomena, a liberating atmosphere is created. Shed House offers unlimited adaptability for balancing work-from-home life in a post-covid era where daily patterns are being recalibrated.

By Toby Breakspear, Alberto Quizon, 2021-2023 Completed. Built by A.M. Custom Builders. Structural Engineering by Cantilever. Photography by Tom Ferguson.


2024 Houses Awards, New Houses over 200m2, Winner
2024 NSW Architecture Award AIA, Houses (New), Winner
2024 Australian Good Design Awards (Architectural Design), Gold Winner
2024 Dezeen Awards (Houses Urban), Shortlist

COURTED HOUSE

Courted House dissolves the threshold between landscape and domestic life. Adjacencies and immediacies between garden and dwelling occur throughout a gridded plan. Planting, sunlight and breeze are internalised through a layering of court-like rooms. This is an other-worldly place where time is defined by the sun’s path around a framed sky. A perimeter of perforated steel screens and cement panels filter the surrounding streets and neighbours. Five metre ceilings and vertical white planes play with light and shadow to enclose with generosity. Complexity comes not from the architecture itself, but from the rich ecology of life in reciprocal relationship with its surrounds.

Courted House condenses and urbanises the classic Australian wrap-around verandah by inverting the model. A central courtyard, secluded from busy surrounds, provides an interior version of “bush”. A lush garden, lit by softly reflected sunlight from the cedar-clad walls is the home’s heart. Embracing each edge of the courtyard is the kitchen, dining, lounge and entry. Rather than conventional interiors, these are four ‘courts’ with proportions, materiality and openings that make a singular composition with the external courtyard. The whole interior becomes a verandah; an outdoor interior of garden and home made inextricably one.

By Toby Breakspear, Tiffany Liew, 2015-2018 Completed. Built by A.M. Custom Builders. Structural Engineering by Cantilever. Photography by Tom Ferguson.

2019 Houses Awards, New Houses under 200m2, Commendation
2019 Australian Interior Design Awards, Shortlist
2019 INDE. Awards, The Living Space Category, Shortlist
2019 NSW Australian Institute of Architects Residential Awards, Shortlist

ECHO POINT VISITOR CENTRE

Greater Sydney is bounded to the West by the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, forming a rare adjacency between global city and pristine wilderness. Echo Point, with direct train and highway connection to Sydney is the main arrival point for five million visitor per year to the Blue Mountains.
In this location, a new information centre can become a point of reference for the entire Blue Mountains with the same transformative impact as the Torri gates of Japan; structures that mark a transition from the mundane to sacred. As a gateway, the new centre can lead visitors from the existing lookout into the bush for direct encounters with the landscape’s remarkable cultural, geological and ecological history.

The Darug and Gundungurra indigenous communities have a long and spiritual connection with the Blue Mountains country. At their suggestion, the new centre blends architecture and landscape to provide ideal settings for cultural exchange. A simple sheltering gesture with the centre’s new roof will connect the site’s peripheries into a singular composition that invites exploration beyond a previously confined perimeter. The centre becomes a continuation of walking trails that reach far into the distant valleys. A roof overhang defines an entry to the trails and suggests a gathering place for laces to be tied and guides to be met within the protected fern gully micro-climate. Horizontally proportioned and gently sloping in parallel to the natural 1:40 gradient, the centre is a grounded space that merges with the terrain of plateaus and gorges carved from ancient sandstone.

Dense eucalyptus forest blankets one million hectares of the Blue Mountains. The perfumed oils exhaled by each breathing tree are so abundant that incoming light is scattered by their presence, a phenomenon that contributes to a visible blue aura in the region’s atmosphere. The new visitor centre is a sequence of external interiors that bathe in this unique air. The centre has no walls. A timber block, containing storage, staff services, information kiosk and merchandise display is sculpted in parallel to the concrete roof above. The block is a spine between the arrival forecourt and the centre’s public spaces for retail, information, exhibition and events. An operable, sinuous skin of glass moderates the rain and wind. Through the transparent facade a wall of forest encloses the interior. Amongst the tree trunks are tangential glimpses of the iconic Three Sisters. Views are not framed, the landscape and architecture are experienced as one. The ceiling is an uninterrupted surface supported with a minimum of vertical steel columns. The sheltering concrete mass is dematerialised as the mountain light is reflected and intensified from the soft polished sheen.

By Toby Breakspear, Tiffany Liew, Ciaran Acton, in collaboration with CHROFI, 2015-Current. Structural Engineering by Cantilever. For Blue Mountains City Council

ONEA APARTMENTS

The robust rationality of oneA is a framework for sustainable urban living that brings residents and their surrounds together in a rich ecology of life. Each apartment has an integrated living and balcony space that encourages outdoor dwelling along the building’s leafy edge. A lush communal garden fills the OneA’s courtyard. Over an outdoor public foyer and entry, a void dramatically rises to the sky through the building’s main vertical axis. Branching from the central void and foyer are breezeway links that make a pedestrian street for movement throughout the building in the constant presence of natural elements. A modular, off-form concrete frame, inset with anodised aluminium panels offers the street a facade of coherence and rhythm. The raw and robust materials will patina and age gracefully with time. Creepers reach the full height of the building and operable fabric awnings combine to soften and enliven OneA’s enduring presence.

By Toby Breakspear, in collaboration with Kann Finch (Executive Architect), 2015-2018. Photography by Tom Ferguson.

City of Sydney Design Excellence Competition, 1st Place
2019 NSW Architecture Awards, Shortlist

HILL HOUSE

Hill House rests on the Seaforth escarpment, overlooking the vast stretch of harbour toward Spit Bridge. Built in 1980 by Martin and Lisa Hill, the home was designed by a friend to suit their young family by the sea. Now, 40 years later, the couple lives there alone, enjoying visits from their grown children and grandchildren. The renovation gently evolves the house’s original layout and Sydney-School character whilst bringing the interior in contact with the hillside setting.

The renovation was subtle yet transformative; an act of continuity rather than reinvention. The house remained much as it had been, its structure left intact. The guiding principle was one of preservation—not only of materials but of memory. The old clerestory roofs, steep and sheltering, still rise from the hillside as they always have. The rooms are familiar, yet now enlivened by the harbour environment. The exterior was strengthened with layers of stone, concrete, and zinc to ensure the house would stand for many more years. Through new glazing, the colours of the harbour spill inside and soft reflections of blue water animate the timber joinery, the white vaults, and the shear curtains.

At the base of the house, a new concrete podium anchors the structure to the sandstone escarpment. This intervention, replacing the old deck and pathways, creates spaces for the family to gather. The podium, with its quiet horizontality, grounds the roof above, its four terraced levels connecting the house to the land. A staircase leads down to the pool, the jetty, and a garden that had, for a time, been forgotten. Hidden within the mass of concrete are rooms that seem to emerge from the rock itself—a cellar, a sauna, an entertaining room—each revealing the sandstone escarpment in a dramatic play of light and earth.

By Toby Breakspear, Tiffany Liew, Ciaran Acton, 2016-2020. Built by A.M. Custom Builders. Structural Engineering by Partridge.

2024 NSW Architecture Awards AIA, Houses (Alterations and Additions) – Shortlist

ALLAMBIE AMENITIES

The Allambie Picnic Area is a much-loved destination within Sydney’s Royal National Park. Six million people visit each year to enjoy the area’s sheltered waterways, river flats and surrounding bushland. The new Audley Amenities pavilion is sited here, at the confluence of the Hacking River and Kangaroo Creek. The pavilion takes the form of a screen so as not to disturb the park’s ambiance. Made from Australian hardwood, the timber screening will grey with time and blend further into the adjacent bush hillside.

Coupled with acting as a backdrop, the building also wants to be inviting. A translucent roof material illuminates the interior with natural light. A soft glow emanates from within, enlivening the building’s otherwise quiet presence. Breezes flow and river views are filtered through the various screen orientations. The park’s concrete pathway is continued with the pavilion’s interior axis. A place for handwashing, remote from the toilet facilities, is contained along this colonnade-like edge of the building. Concluding this public axis is a framed view of the river. The Audley Amenities pavilion attempts to amplify the natural beauty of the site. It tries to elevate the architecture from the merely practical in the hope that the pavilion can add to people’s enjoyment of the park.

By Toby Breakspear, Alberto Quizon, Andy Huang, Lucie Hlavsova, 2020 – 2022

REGATTA PARK PAVILION

The Regatta Pavilion is currently under construction on the bank of the Nepean River in Regatta Park. More information coming soon.

By Toby Breakspear, Alberto Quizon, Lucie Hlavsova, Andy Huang , 2020-Current.

MANLY ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM

The Manly Art Gallery and Museum [MAG&M] will integrate the building with the surrounding public realm, create a strong and inviting identity, improve the exhibition rooms and introduce new facilities that will see the gallery become a vibrant community meeting place with space for events, education, performance, study and a cafe.

By Toby Breakspear, John Kang, Ciaran Acton, Matthew Argent, 2018. For Northern Beaches Council

POLY

Poly combines architecture, exhibition design and product fabrication in an installation commissioned and presented by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF). It is a collective pavilion; a group of hooded and moveable structures each proportioned to fit two seated people. The hoods are on wheels for easy rearrangement by both the gallery staff and visitors. Planned and unplanned events occur around various social and solo arrangements of Poly. The making of Poly was a process of digital prefabrication with the structures designed as a cutting file, milled from a stockpile of aluminium composite panels, shipped flat and folded together in the gallery by hand without the need for expensive tooling.

By Toby Breakspear, Tomek Archer, 2014. Photography by Brett Boardman, Kasia Werstak.

IDEA Awards 2014, Shortlist

BRONTE LIFEGUARD TOWER

A new lifeguard tower is to be installed at Bronte Beach for Waverley Council. The tower is positioned and oriented to provide a permanent lookout point with uninterrupted vistas and quick access to the two ends of the beach where people frequently need rescuing from strong rips in the water. The tower’s form and presence is responsive to the beautiful beach environment in which it is placed. The structure will be prefabricated for easy installation and removal from the site, in much the same way beach-goers arrange and pack-up their towels, umbrellas, surfboards. Made from pre-cast concrete, the tower’s sculptural form will withstand and playfully interact with the beach’s shifting sands and incoming tides.

By Toby Breakspear, Tiffany Liew, 2017-Current. For Waverley Council.