This house embodies a long, fruitful collaboration between architect Matthew Woodward and owner-builder Adam Haughey. The two met years ago through friends, and have since come to work together on numerous projects. The triangle of architect-client-builder is often held together in delicate balance. When it works, and trust prevails, it is a solid thing, and the best possible foundation for a project. It is buoying when amity and understanding is cultivated between builders and architects, and this pair clearly support and challenge one another.

Adam describes the house as a résumé project – and there is a lot to drink in. Matthew, meanwhile, speaks of “cinematic sublimity,” and an intention to deliver prospect and refuge, craftsmanship and robustness, serenity and playfulness.

Located in Whoota on the New South Wales coast, the house is ostensibly two masses – one in timber and one in concrete – joined by a bridging element and courtyard. On arrival, we enter into the concrete mass via a passage, past a large window facing the coast. This block has a planted roof, with succulents tumbling out over the walls. It houses the kitchen and living space.

A long spine connects us with the second block – the living quarters – containing two guest bedrooms and a bathroom at ground level, and the main bedroom and a workspace above. This wing is clad with recycled blackbutt shiplap boards and battens on the north elevation, and polycarbonate sheeting to the south. Part of the timber screening outside the main bedroom opens mechanically.

A drift through the house reveals screens in reclaimed dowel, shelves and door faces in mild steel, timber joinery, cleverly adapted hardware, form-ply cabinetwork, raw fibre cement sheeting and tightly curved tiling – a wealth of meticulous tradesmanship.

The care shown in the house’s junctions and construction details is notable, with many elements resolved collaboratively. The concrete work on the project is exceptional: voids and corners in the roof slab are sharp, and the soffit is satin-smooth. Curtain rails and casings for the vast glazed door suites were boldly cast directly into the slab – a move that is high risk and, thankfully, high reward.

Seamlessness is clearly an expectation across the project, and where multiple materials meet they are aligned flush and to a grid. A herb box is embedded into a continuously folded stainless steel section in the kitchen benchtop, with a south-facing window as its splashback. Doors appear frameless, and cabinetwork meets the ceiling with millimetre precision.

And yet, it is some of the unfussy moments in the project that provide the most delight. A linear skylight positioned parallel to the kitchen bench, opens up to the sky through the roof planting. During construction, before the junction between concrete and skylight was sealed, a few rogue dichondra fronds made their way through the gap. After pulling them out a couple of times, Adam decided to modify the detail, and now these unexpected houseguests tumble happily into the interior.

An upper level walkway in standard cyclone mesh connects the house to the slope behind it, where a bocce pit and lawn reside. A huge water tank and a tall flue sticking through the roof garden provide novel punctuation to the linear layout. In addition to the house, there is an impressive shed, housing a dormitory-type setup, a kitchenette, a huge workshop, and, wait for it, a skateboarding half-pipe. The house is an escape and crash pad for owner as well as guests, and the shed provides ample space to create (and recreate).

The house is largely open to the landscape to its north and commands a sweeping view. It absorbs the setting through large and frequent openings with concealed frames, and these open onto a lawn garden with kangaroo paws and grasses foregrounding Wallis Lake beyond. There is an air of a picturesque painting about the view from the living room and lawn. The upper level and roof garden take in the bluish peaks of the Booti Booti National Park ranges to the north-west. The block slopes quite steeply, and a retainer has been cut into the hillside along its south elevation. The house seems to sit on an axis that bisects the lake, the arc of two headlands, and the horizon of the ocean beyond in total symmetry.

Despite all the visual features, tactile memories endure from my visit – walking in bare feet from smooth slab in the living space, to roughened washed aggregate concrete in the wet areas, to standing on the plushest of Zoysia grass on the roof garden, and toothy buffalo on the front lawn.

This house expresses a strong working relationship between its designer and maker; and it may induce early retirement plans in any who visit. 

Wallis Lake House is built on the land of the Wallamba people of the Worimi nation.

This article first appeared on architectureau.com.