Table of Contents Show
Otway Beach House by Kerstin Thompson Architects is a 196 square metre concrete house in Wye River, Australia, completed in 2024. It sits in a clearing beside the Great Ocean Road, on the edge of a national park, with the sea in front and forest climbing the hill behind. The land belongs to the Country of the Eastern Maar and Wadawurrung Peoples.
The site lies in a designated “flame zone” for bushfire risk, where planning authorities initially considered building to be impossible. The architects did not try to work around this rule. They made fire resistance the starting point of the design.
From unbuildable to approved
Approval took a long time. What finally made it possible was an envelope built to survive bushfire: insulated concrete wall panels, a concrete roof and fire rated windows. With that shell agreed, the project could be certified and built. The house is deliberately heavy, closer in its materials and structure to a piece of civic infrastructure than to a typical timber beach shack.
One long room between hill and sea
The plan is a plain rectangle. Bedrooms sit at the inland end and the living spaces face the ocean. Seen in cross section, the house is a simple extrusion, a row of deep beams resting on concrete wall panels. The long section tells the real story. At the northern end the building is pushed into the slope, and the bedrooms look up toward the forest through a planted garden on the hillside next to them. These rooms feel sheltered and settled into the ground.
At the southern end the floor meets the ground at terrace level and the house opens toward the water. Here the living and dining space takes up the full width of the building, so that the view of the horizon is framed edge to edge. Sheer curtains soften the glass, and a long timber dining table sits directly in front of the sea.
A roof that becomes a lookout
The concrete base continues upward to form the roof, which serves as a terrace. A steel spiral stair climbs to it, and a light galvanised frame with a shade canopy and mesh railings marks the outdoor room on top. From there the house becomes one more of the many viewing points along the Great Ocean Road, with forest on one side and open water on the other.
Softening the concrete
The architects describe the building in infrastructural terms: the interior as an underpass, the roof as a bridge between forest and sea. What makes it domestic is timber. Blackbutt lines the secondary walls and is used for most of the joinery, warming the grey concrete floors and ceilings.
Project team
Kerstin Thompson led the design with Hilary Sleigh, Laura Patterson, Lynn Chew, Sarah Cooper and William Samuels. G.L. Building and Construction built the house, OPS Engineers handled structure and services, and South Coast Bushfire Consultants advised on fire. For another Australian home on our site, see Back to Front House by Ian Moore Architects, and for a house where concrete walls define the whole design, House on Concrete Walls by dolmus Architekten.
Leave a comment