A classic beach house style of the 1950s was the inspiration behind this Neeson Murcutt weekender on Sydney’s north coast.

With an idyllic view but a fiendishly difficult site on NZ’s Waiheke Island, architects Atelier Workshop pushed the envelope on sustainability whilst delivering a high level of beauty.

With a brief that asked for “the opposite of a beach mansion”, the owners of this 40-square-metre hut got exactly that. And couldn’t have been more pleased.

With no glamour view and barely a flat surface upon which to build, this low-budget NZ bush retreat packs quite an architectural punch.

A simple cabin nestled on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula has been dramatically transformed by a compact, angular addition shaped, quite literally, by the architect’s expertise in landscape design and sculpture.

The owners of a windswept site in Inverloch, two hours south- east of Melbourne, turned to a Sydney-based architect for an unconventional home that offered both exposure to and protection from their stunning coastal environment.

With a superb site on the Tasman Peninsula, the owners put their trust in a firm of young architects. It was a leap of faith that led them in a direction they would never have thought of.

A harsh landscape, albeit with a glorious view, on Tasmania’s east coast set the challenge for a beach house that could last the distance.

With three architects involved this holiday house could have pulled out all the design stops, instead it became an exercise in restraint.

Designed with a certain nostalgia, this new weekender takes the best of the fibro shack ideal – simple amenity in a beautiful location – and interprets it with contemporary materials and the essentials of sustainable design.