From the designer:

One Shearwater Drive sits comfortably in its coastal lookout in Mt Martha on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula. An elemental palette of materials and finishes that will weather well provides a stylish and hardy skin to the luxury within.

On approach, the house hunkers down into its surrounds, aided by Vibe’s landscaping of the site. Visitors are greeted by a totemic rectangular form clad in black Alucobond. It functions as a garage, but could just as easily be an abstract sculpture, a geometric outcrop on the coastal terrain. This welcome is indicative of a deliberately ambiguous, understated entry.

As you proceed, you pass a work sculpted in steel by Australian artist Russell Petherbridge.

The home’s entry is more pivoting wall than front door, hinting at the generous scale within. The interior is a series of volumes connected to decking platforms over two levels, all oriented to the expansive views of Port Phillip Bay, and collected around a central double-height void.

The sea-facing elevation is every bit a contemporary coastal villa. The forms and materials are evocative of the modern movement; refined geometry, elegant, wide proportions. The levels of decking terrace gently down to meet the ground. From the front, an exercise in modest, minimal chic.

It is a fundamental sense of style and proportion that ties these two faces together into one cohesive and completely local building.