The Story of NURA | Chapter 3 | Edition Office

NURA, Rye by Neometro is a pocket of land located on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. Subdivided for the future development of six environmentally conscious and mutually cohesive homes, the project is uniquely oriented towards architectural interventions that will both preserve and symbiotically support the coastal context. Edition Office, an architectural studio based in Melbourne, executes work fundamentally aligned with a residential proposal wholly harmonious with NURA’s intents.

Lot 2 at NURA harnesses a duplicitous quality of place. The brutality of the rock formations that cut into the waters of Rye’s back beach, and the softly sheltered landscape protected by the gently eroding dunes that separate the beach from the nearby built environment are equally present here. Edition Office has given identical benevolence to these notions. Playing the two modes off one another,  a residential design proposal has been realised that uses architecture as an elemental device, framing moments of landscape from within a home that is decidedly unfussy and carefully integrated into its surrounding environment.

Edition Office have proposed a robust home tucked within a pocket of silence behind the dunes. A reductive material palette of predominantly rammed earth walls and Australian hardwood reflect the native backdrop and yield similarly diminished use and navigation. This is proposed as a place where the fundamentals play out in a lifestyle balancing pragmatics and relaxation. 

Juxtaposing the force of the ocean beyond, the home’s form is linked to rudimentary silhouettes with a steeply pitched roofline and uncomplicated rectangular footprint. Drawing on a desire to amplify the phenomenological aspects of the site, the house has been elevated to the extreme with markers in the natural environment forming sight lines for the design. A south-facing porch is deliberately aligned with prevalent tea-tree shrubs while a north facing subterranean pool and deck has been oriented to allow northern sunlight to penetrate the otherwise quietly cavernous space. 

A series of disconnected blade walls delineate flexible interior spaces that can be manipulated to optimise the layout depending on how many inhabitants occupy it at any one time. Walls pull away when there are few people present allowing for spatial freedom, an unmitigated beckoning of the outdoors, and intimacy as circumstances require. 

“Spaces are wonderfully carefree. Wonderfully quiet. Devoid of the detritus of functionality.”  – Kim Bridgland, Edition Office Director.

Edition Office has proposed a residence for Lot 2 at Nura that appeals to the looseness of the beach house idea wrapped up in all the influences and inspirations of the its environment. The atmosphere particular to the Mornington Peninsula’s rural landscape permeates every inch of the building envelop to culminate in a coastal experience designed to feel sensorially replete.    

Words | Tiffany Jade