The house was designed to replace an existing shack on a steeply sloping site on a wooded foreshore. Ground conditions are notoriously unstable with blue slippery clay with rotating shelves underground. Foundations needed to be deeply piled and retained with soil nails and an early decision was to create a flat stable platform for a simple ‘box’ house raised on legs above the ground. This allowed for the simplest possible below ground solution, reduced the area of house that ‘touched’ the ground, avoided the need for complex and expensive multi level changes within the house whilst raising it ‘tree house’ like amongst the trees.
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