In this four-level home on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, a vast picture window frames the sweep of beach below and headland beyond. The dramatic scene is ever-shifting throughout the day with the tides and weather, the result a dynamic artwork where the brushstrokes never dry. It’s part of a gallery of ocean vignettes that runs through the house, where each window offers a different perspective on the spectacle, which, paradoxically perhaps, is both calming and energising at once. In this house of many moods, the back, by contrast, offers the serene, less mutable, aspect of bushland.
After buying the property in 2000, the owners used the mid-century weekender on the site as a welcome retreat for them and their four youngsters. But, as the children began families of their own, the…
