Embracing nature: Inside an Ellen Woolley-designed Castlecrag home heading to auction

Sydney architect Ellen Woolley doesn’t shirk a challenge. Often her projects involve more than one, whether she’s tackling extreme topography, bushfire and heritage issues, environmental conservation or sustainability.

All the while, she makes sure she leaves something exquisite in place of lasting beauty and joy. This multilevel stunner in Castlecrag, on Sydney’s well-heeled lower north shore, is no exception.

The concrete, glass and timber house – completed in 2020 and shortlisted for the Australian Institute of Architects’ House of the Year in 2021 – was built on a 4.5-metre wide rocky plateau between a pair of sheer three-metre sandstone cliff faces, overlooking a giant angophora tree in the backyard and a thick bush canopy beyond.

“This was one of the more challenging sites I’ve ever had to work with,” says Woolley.

The complexity of the block required the concrete slab walls to be precast and craned into place.

Thumping cantilevers were also used to extend the house’s floor space – the top-level dining room reaching over the cliff line is the best example of this.

The configuration of the site also meant the house had to be split into a three-storey structure, on the north face, and two storeys on the south, tied by a void running through the core of the building.

“It’s a mean feat of engineering,” Woolley sums up.

Click to open gallery

But the sublime brilliance of the design doesn’t lie simply in how Woolley has overcome the constraints of a tricky location but rather how she has turned them to her advantage.

On the street-level top floor, the main kitchen and dining areas suspend you above the canopy “like a bird’s perch in the treetop”, while the living room opens fully up, like a verandah.

Both create a close private connection with the bush and the angophora (Woolley describes it as the house’s “big living heart”), distancing you from the surrounding neighbourhood and the sense of the everyday. The floors below are similarly private.

One level down, there are a semi-open study, rumpus zone and second bedroom and, down again, bathrooms and more bedrooms, the main with an en suite and walk-in wardrobe.

The U-shape of the house, around the plateau, also means these private spaces and nooks form a calming interior.

“The owners lived in Japan, so inside it’s shoes off at the door and a very mindful engagement with your environment,” says Woolley.

In contrast, strikingly sculptural steel and timber staircases linking the floors are designed like a dynamic streetscape to circulate people through the home, generating theatre, communication and meted out measures of interaction.

“The building itself is lovely societally,” she adds.

Woolley has also incorporated sustainability into her design, particularly as the owners have backgrounds in environmental science.

She points out that the concrete walls were constructed with a thermal layer sandwiched between them, effectively converting them into “giant Eskys” to maintain comfortable temperatures.

Additionally, a green roof was laid over the living room and the 250-million-year-old bedrock, which emits a constant temperature, was retained as flooring.

SOLD - $4,797,173

94 Sugarloaf Crescent, Castlecrag NSW 2068

3

3

1

View property

Woolley says it’s about “doing less once, well,” which is in itself sustainable. More than this, she is embracing the progressive idea of biophilic living.

“We get healthy and happy from having a genuine connection with our environment and it can produce things like calm, respite and regeneration not only for everything around us but for us, as well,” says Woolley.

“We don’t do enough of this as architects or humans right now.”

Rick Woodward from The Agency North takes the home to auction on April 9 with a guide of $5 million.

“I’ve never seen a house on the lower north shore like it. It’s a true sanctuary … generating a lot of interest among buyers who’ve never considered this family-friendly area in the past,” he says.