The Story of NURA | Chapter 2 | Robert Simeoni Architects

Architecture, Design - by Tiffany Jade

10th February, 2021.

NURA Rye by Neometro, a pocket of land on the back beaches of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, is a place naturally divided by towering sand dunes which, on the interior, capture a sense of benevolence for man’s efforts to live in harmony with nature while, on the other side, amplify Bass Straight’s wrath and roar. A recent design inquiry facilitated by Melbourne development group Neometro has realised conceptual responses to each of the 6 land lots currently available for sensitive development across some of Australia’s most spectacular coastline. Robert Simeoni has responded with a residential design proposal of ephemeral beauty and an air of impermanence.

Robert Simeoni Architects is a studio distinguished by the realisation of residential buildings that sensorially reconcile the natural and built environments. Working across various typologies, the studio produces richly atmospheric outcomes defined by the phenomenal execution of light and materiality. Simeoni’s response to Lot 5 at NURA is a continuation of this philosophy with the conceptual outline of a residence in accord with the landscapes natural vegetation and the golden sunlight particular to dawn and dusk on the Peninsula.

NURA’s site context is a seductively forlorn landscape which Simeoni has reflected in a design that coaxes and intrigues via a veiled materiality juxtaposed by robust structural elements. His proposal is a home in continues flux with a spatial delineation contingent on a highly considered curtain and track system. While each essential element of a home – kitchen, bathroom/s, bedroom/s and living spaces – are present, the volumes and arrangement are defined by ‘curtains’ and light. Mellowed as it passes through perforated layers of varying translucency, the light permeates the interior volumes of the proposed home imbuing it with beauty and a patina of nostalgia.

The schematics for Lot 5 are a gentle re-negotiation of how domestic space can be used. Morphing and evolving with the changing uses and inhabitants like the tide. This is a residence designed to endure life’s rhythms with space mediating between various configurations of inhabitants, resonance, seasons and era’s. As a holiday home, it yields to the native landscape and can be opened up entirely to nurture summers spent predominantly outdoors. As a permanent residence it navigates between intimacy and togetherness with opportunities for both in any number of forms. Like cracks in the landscape, the residential design that has Robert Simeoni has proposed is one that borrows from the fundamentals of Australian coastal life while gently suggesting a way of living that could very possibly be better.