Patsy
A coastal getaway at Coles Bay, on the doorstep of Freycinet, designed with Next 50 Architects.
The brief
An escape from the south — somewhere to leave Hobart behind and arrive at the East Coast properly, with a sauna, and a second dwelling so friends and family can come without anyone losing their privacy.
The two-dwelling arrangement is the clever part of the brief. Guests at a holiday house are the whole point and also the main source of friction; giving visitors their own building solves it without anyone feeling managed.
The build
Coles Bay is one of the most rewarding places in Australia to build and one of the least forgiving. There is very little shelter on this peninsula, so wind classification drives structure, glazing and roof detailing. Airborne salt attacks fixings and flashings long before it marks a finish, which makes marine-grade selection the baseline rather than an upgrade. And most coastal-bush blocks through here carry a bushfire rating that materially changes construction.
Distance shapes the programme on top of all that. Coles Bay is a long way from a supplier, so deliveries consolidate, trades travel, and the sequence is planned around both rather than adjusted on the fly.
Then there is the condition specific to a getaway: it sits empty. An unoccupied, unheated coastal house is exactly where condensation and mould take hold, and no amount of good finish survives it. A well-sealed, continuously insulated envelope with proper ventilation keeps the interior dry and stable between visits — and means the house is comfortable within an hour of arriving rather than a day.
The result
A getaway that works the way a getaway should: arrive, light the sauna, and have the place already warm and dry.
See our East Coast work and Coles Bay. Photography by Tassie Visuals.
