Lunalon
A Forever Home under construction on Bruny Island, designed with MK Design to sit lightly on a dramatic island site.
The brief
A house that answers a spectacular setting without shouting over it — and that performs properly in a place where comfort is expensive to import.
The build
“Sitting lightly” is an architectural intention that a builder either delivers or quietly erodes. It lives in the junctions: how a wall meets the ground, how a roof edge resolves, whether a structural necessity is expressed or apologised for. Those are the details that get value-managed away on an ordinary build, and they are the reason the house looks like the drawings when it doesn’t happen.
Everything else is Bruny. The ferry governs the programme — deliveries consolidated, trades scheduled as full island days, a buffer of consumables held on site. Services are designed rather than connected. Salt and wind set the material palette at the fixing level, well before anything visible.
And because island homes are often unoccupied for weeks, the envelope has to keep the interior dry without anyone present. An airtight, continuously insulated build with heat-recovery ventilation does that on very little energy — which matters more when the power is coming from your own roof.
The result
Under construction now. Follow it on the under construction page.
See Captains Quarters, also under construction on Bruny, or read about building on Bruny Island. Photography by Mike Durek.