Photography by Murray Fredericks and Prue Ruscoe, courtesy of Romaine Alwill and Michelle Orszaczky.
A few weeks back, we featured landscape architect William Dangar‘s own residential landscape in Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Gardenista (see Downsizing a House to Expand the Garden: At Home with Landscape Architect William Dangar); you asked to see the interiors, and we’re happy to oblige.
For the architecture, the couple’s brief was “evocative and graphic,” Orszaczky says: Inspired by simple timber structures in Greenland and hillside barns in New Zealand, the Dangars specified a modern barn.
The main room is a combined kitchen and dining with a desk space along the far wall.
The kitchen cabinets are American oak veneer with a matte white, hand-painted finish.
The countertops are honed Carrara marble.
Cabinets in the walk-in pantry received the same treatment as the main kitchen cabinets, but in black.
A simple, built-in oak plank serves as a work surface, and a custom file cabinet matches the kitchen cabinets.
Both the dining and living rooms open completely onto the backyard.
The living room sofa is Bronte from Urban Couture.
The exterior shingles are stained with Woodsman oil in Pitch Black from New Zealand company Resene.
Used as the daily family entrance, the mudroom has a built-in bench of American oak, floors of tumbled marble, and oak wall hooks.
A landing at the top of the stairs serves as an informal lounge and media room.
The master bedroom sits at one end of the top floor; a partial-height, black-painted shiplap wall serves as a headboard while dividing the space.
The master bath has a tumbled marble floor, brass fixtures, and a skylight for natural light.
The sliding glass doors can completely open one corner of the house, off the living room.
taken by photographer Murray Fredericks, along with images Dangar found of black barns in Queenstown, New Zealand.
The house was inspired by photos of “modest little huts on the sides of glaciers in Greenland”
“The concept of a barn-style house in the busy beach suburb of Bondi was really an interesting proposition and very much at odds to the general vernacular of the area,” Alwill says.