Harbourside Apartments and Boathouse offers a casual living environment, designed by Andrew Burges Architects, positioned at the harbors edge in Sydney, Australia. Completed in 2009, the architects designed the threshold for this boathouse with weight and solidity to create a cavernous quality to the interior that is distinct from the surrounding lightweight timber boathouse structures.

The boathouse was part of a seven level structure containing 2 apartments on a steeply sloping site in Point Piper. We designed all the apartment plans to slowly reveal and then open to the harbor and landscape beyond, and connected the interiors to their own terraced garden or carved outdoor room on the harbor.

Moving down the seven levels of the apartment building, materials change from the refined to the robust. On the foreshore we have selected materials that have a history of weathering successfully in the more public structures of the waterfront – sandstone, rough sawn concrete, and recycled timber.

In the compact floor plan of the boathouse, we orchestrated unexpected experiences of scale, with the boat-like scale of the bathroom opening into a shower within a 5 meters high light shaft.

Photos: Andrew Burges Architects