VISION Issue 3 | Page 7

7 Left Front entrance view picks up courtyard, cranked plan and ocean vista. T The Palm Beach House is a work of sublime seduction. It guides the visitor from an understated street-frontage to a cinematic climax across the treetops towards the Pacific Ocean. Forty kilometres to Sydney’s north, the design is a stripped-down model of glass, concrete and stone. The grand disappearing trick of glass as barely there enhances the spectacle, while streamlined interiors allow light and breeze to flow easily throughout. he craft of architecture involves such an eye for detail that many hardly notice how effortlessly it all falls into place. At least this is the case with Sydney architect Shahe Simonian whose Palm Beach House design is a mosaic of meticulous consideration. Simonian’s work has a molded, interlocking sensuality with subtle shifts of perspective. A curved, full-height courtyard glass wall provides a beautiful veil and one of the most elegant lightcatchers imaginable. A cranked floor plan almost imperceptibly asks us to re-align our expectations. Rather than rectangular box, the architecture conjures a convincing organic spatial flow. “THEY ASKED, ‘WILL IT BE LIKE STANDING ON THE EDGE OF A CLIFF?’ WE RESPONDED: ‘YES IT WILL’” Shahe Simonian, architect. Beach houses are typically more relaxed than the average suburban dwelling. Or at least they should be. They have the opportunity to live up to the promise of sunshine, sand and sea rather than asphalt and garage. The best examples make this connection without falling for the forced, or clichéd` idea of beach house. And they don’t have interior designers run riot to create a stage-set pastiche of Florida Quays. In this regard Simonian allows the broad design to speak. The result yields to the Pacific Ocean’s grand theatre, allowing sunlight to splinter and wash its way throughout the house like a good spring clean. Ocean Pearl