Cyclones and sustainability inspire Magnetic Island home built into boulders

The inherent and inherited restrictions on this Magnetic Island pavilion project were formidable.

Unusual concepts framed the design ideas that Townsville-based Zammi Rohan employed to create a holiday house for two Hong Kong-based clients: cyclones and the skeleton of a pre-attempted structure plus a proscribed enviro-sensitive building envelope set up by the developers of Nobby’s Headland for a block of land that looks out to the Coral Sea and back to Townsville.

“Key” granite boulders had to be kept in situ, and why wouldn’t you when they constitute a collection of sensational nature sculptures?

A high tendency for landslip had to be factored in with the need for a dwelling that would have the dual qualities of being both breezy and insulated, and to become the suitable backdrop for Paris interior design firm G.B.R.H to install what Rohan says is “a fantastic collection of artwork, mid-century and custom-designed furniture and cabinetry”.

Oh yes. The clients also required a swimming pool of amorphous shape to mould around the boulders.

“It was a challenging puzzle”, says the architect. “But it was a lot more exciting than starting with a blank rectangular block”. Like a sheet of white paper, ordinary and untrammelled sites are by far the harder option, he thinks. “I always prefer to have something that shapes the project.”

The point of making the three-bedroom, two-bathroom building with the horizontal “veil” of tropically grown timber battens applied over the weatherproof under-skin of cladding, and that he says will progressively “soften and silver off to blend the building even more into the setting”, was to form it in two distinct sections.

“The different pavilions were both a response to the site and to set the house up so that one pavilion can be occupied on its own – unless there are guests, when both are utilised.

“At 140 square metres, it’s actually really small”.

But the point of the place is the great Far North Queensland outdoors that are just out there beyond the decks and that visually extend space to the multi-directional horizons.

In such a geologically and climactically powerful setting, the building sits very delicately on the land, reliant “on minimal (if deeply anchored) touch points. This allows breezes and wildlife to pass underneath”.

The whole schema allows everyone and everything desiring to inhabit the land to maintain their full quotient of creature comforts.