Located on the Great Ocean Road with a short walk down to Eagle Rock, No.23 sits amongst coastal walks, surf beaches, dirt roads, and sandstone cliffs. Designed by Tristan Burfield, the project is a discreet and unassuming timber building, hidden at the back of its site—a house that has slowly developed what the architect calls "its own quiet, individual and curious architectural language."
The design centres on a long array of tall, deep-revealed blackbutt timber window frames that open the small building’s spaces onto itself and the garden views beyond. Raw, hard-wearing galvanised steel frames border the door and window openings, with repeated folded sheet profiles forming a spandrel fascia line above. Chains drop down from the upper levels, encouraging new landscaping to reach up and slowly embrace the façade over time—a building designed not for a single moment but for a slow becoming.
Inside, simple timber-lined spaces provide the essentials, oriented firmly toward the outdoors. A small open fireplace with a garden view offers reprieve from the coastal winds in one room, while another—colloquially referred to as the ship’s cabin—features a long foot-to-foot single-level bunk trimmed in tarnished brass. The furnishings speak to a calm beach holiday: soft open-weave natural linens, woven surfaces, timbers, and a collection of books and found objects, all designed to actively resist the ever-present assault from the sand.
The bathrooms are approached with particular rigour in simplicity—a direct response to what beach-house wet areas endure. A heavy-gauge galvanised steel trough forms a deep vanity in one, surrounded by simple white portrait tiles; in the other, a shallow stainless steel wash plane is cut into textured mosaic tiles. "This small building project slowly developed its own quiet, individual and curious architectural language," Burfield reflects. "It’s timber, steel, glass—a very raw, warm and friendly place. It is a lovely project to have authored and one that will age and grow into its landscape in the years to come."
