VISION 32—WAVE RIDER
Any house designed by Kerry and
Lindsay Clare is worthy of attention—
especially when the latest happens to
be only their third residence in a decade.
With a reputation for environmentally
tuned housing on Queensland’s Sunshine
Coast, the couple moved to Sydney to work
in the civic realm where they quickly won
recognition as design directors to the NSW
Government architect. Their work is as
grand as Queensland’s Gallery of Modern
Art to the more recent and beautifully
bespoke Dockland’s library at Melbourne.
I
n between there has been plenty else to consider,
but precious few houses. Visit any Clare Design
project and their signature, while discrete,
inevitably fits like a hand- stitched, calf-skin glove.
Their design for the south-coast house deserves a
qualifier, rather than apology. In an age where
architect designed beach-house as mansion on the
march, they demonstrate the value of structure and
shell as environmental caress instead of crash.
Their design for a light bodied, light-filled glass and
steel ‘shack’ is elegantly taut, neither wasteful with
building materials or power hungry in operation.
Adding to the usual demands for sharp problem
solving, the Clares needed to deal with tough
bushfire regulations involving set-backs and noncombustible materials.
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