Designed to embrace its challenging hillside setting while blending Australian sensibility with subtle American influences, this new-build family home brings together expert craftsmanship, thoughtful design, considered materials, and a strong connection to place.
Every home tells a story, but few begin like this one. One of the owners of Blackpool spent their childhood on this exact site before moving to the United States. Years later, the decision to return to Australia came with a rare opportunity: to build their forever home on the land they had known since childhood, working with a custom home builder who understood exactly what the site, and the story, demanded. “That story shaped everything,” says Jarryd Duffy, director of Tide Constructions.
The brief followed the same thread. “At its heart this is an Australian home, designed the Australian way, but with some considered nods to the American lifestyle they were leaving behind,” Jarryd explains. “Just enough to make them feel immediately at home without pulling the design away from its roots.” The practical requirements were substantial: four to five bedrooms, a dedicated garage, gym, pool and a second master suite upstairs for the couple’s daughter, along with one distinctive request, an internal glass sliding door between the kitchen and living area, giving the family the choice to connect or close off those two worlds depending on the moment.
BUILDING A HOME ON A CHALLENGING SLOPE
Blackpool occupies one of the more demanding blocks a builder could ask for: a trapezoidal site on the side of a hill at the end of a cul-de-sac, with a steep fall across the lot and neighbours sitting at entirely different levels on every boundary. Homes to the rear and west perch considerably higher up the hill, virtually looking down over the roofline.
For designer Anthony Trevor of Synergy Building Design, the response was decisive. “We excavated the lower portion of the site to create a ground floor entry and garage, poured a suspended slab over it, and built the two-storey home above, lifting the living spaces clear of the most constrained part of the block,” Anthony explains. “Orienting to the east and northeast followed both the site’s logic and the sun, delivering light, privacy and a connection to the street, and it informed everything from eave depth to glazing specification.”
For Tide Constructions, being in the conversation early was everything. “Projects like this one benefit enormously from that kind of early and ongoing collaboration between designer and builder,” Jarryd says. That collaboration was tested by the boundaries themselves. An existing block retaining wall to the northeast had to be retained and meticulously engineered around. To the south, ageing retaining walls were actively holding back a pool on the adjoining property, demanding a careful structural solution to protect both homes for the long term. At the rear, significant earthworks and new retaining walls stabilised the steep western slope. And through all of it, the finished building had to stay under the 9.5 metre height limit. “That required careful management of floor-to-floor heights throughout the design process,” Anthony notes. “We got there, and it did not compromise the internal amenity at all.”
CLEVER BUILDING DESIGN & MATERIAL SELECTION
Blackpool’s material story is one of contrast and weight. “At ground level the home is deliberately grounded, with concrete, brick and structural timber carrying the load both literally and visually, softened by landscaping and warm timber tones,” Anthony says. “The upper level then lifts in character, with lightweight cladding, extensive glazing and a refined scheme of black accents, timber highlights and cream wall finishes.” Feature timber ceiling linings bring warmth to the covered outdoor areas.
The flooring tells its own story of collaboration. The owners had their hearts set on a heavily distressed hardwood, and the search turned toward an engineered timber that could deliver the same textured, characterful result with far better durability. “Finding the most distressed, tactile engineered floor on the market that still met the brief was the challenge,” Jarryd says. “The outcome is something the clients are delighted with.” Underneath it all sat a one-word brief: luxury, a line the palette holds consistently from top to bottom.
BUILDING STATEMENT-MAKING OUTDOOR SPACES
The finished home’s defining moment sits at its very entrance: the courtyard between the two main wings at the front of the house. As designer Anthony Trevor of Synergy Building Design puts it, the sequence shifts “from enclosure to openness, from heavy to light, in a few steps.” For Jarryd and the Tide Constructions team, delivering that moment was among the build’s great rewards. “As you arrive and climb the stairs from the entry level, there is a moment where you are almost subterranean, moving through the base of the building, and then you emerge upward into this open courtyard space with feature trees framing the view ahead,” he describes. “That transition is what good design can do when the site allows it, and building it was a privilege.”
For a family making decisions from the other side of the world for much of the journey, the final walkthrough carried particular weight. “Working with people who were relocating internationally, making decisions on a home they could not always visit in person, is a particular kind of challenge,” Jarryd reflects. “Delivering a result that matched what we had set out to build together, and seeing their reaction to it in person for the first time, made the whole journey worthwhile.” And the verdict from the owners, home at last on the street where it all began? “They love every aspect of it. It is fair to say they are not in any hurry to leave.”
Tide Constructions — tideconstructions.com.au | @tideconstructions | QBCC: 15099089
Photography: Nira Creative
