Kingsway

Set prominently with views to the Swan River and Perth City, Kingsway evokes a sense of walking through the canopy of a rainforest with streaming natural light flooding into the living areas via extensive glazing and warm exotic timber finishes throughout.

This particular home in Nedlands was designed to encapsulate the extensive, spectacular views of Perth’s Swan River, whilst maximising a site that was both unusually shaped and sloping.

The design, comprising three levels and two separate wings joined by a skybridge alfresco, uses natural northern light to filter down through the centre of the home to the reflection pond at its base.

This opening up of the centre of the house enables the inhabitant of each space to have the ability to look up into other areas or look down and across into others. By doing so, the important, delicate balance between physical separation and visual connectivity within a family unit is maintained.

Naturally, the ability to view various other parts of the house in this way called for an extensive use of glass, supported and divided at diverse elevations by the most skeletal of framework. Access to the seemingly unsupported first and second floors by means of these open staircases only adds to the surreal feeling of living high above the real world.

Indeed, this residence evokes memories of a tree house, made to seem all the more so by the extensive use of oiled-oak floorboards throughout and the substantial planter boxes of foliage, lifted to hug the edge of the home’s higher-level rooms. Iroko Timber Joinery and Silver Ash claddings provide a beautiful blend of warmth and nature in combination with lush external surroundings.