Permanent Weekender
Wagstaffe
A permanent home at Wagstaffe on the southern tip of the New South Wales Central Coast, finished in 2021 for a couple downsizing out of Sydney after forty years in other houses: the final house they planned to build, comfortable for two and open to visiting children and grandchildren. The name is the whole idea, a sea change house lived in every day. Two timber wings sit over a utilitarian lower floor of recycled brick and hold a raised courtyard between them, open on one side to frame Brisbane Water, and the trusses in this picture are recycled blackbutt, structural timber carrying oversized eaves that keep the walls out of the weather.
The material rules are strict: no plasterboard anywhere, white-painted timber boards where more light was wanted, and floors that change from concrete to brick and back to mark the passage from public rooms to private ones. Recycled brick was chosen for permanency, the blackbutt because it is locally sourced and banks carbon, and a full array of solar cells sits on the roof above an exposed concrete slab whose thermal mass steadies the house through the seasons. It was published in 2021 under another name, Wagstaffe House; Permanent Weekender is the practice's own title for it.
buck&simple
A Sydney studio established in 2013 at Manly by directors Peter James Ahern and Kurt Crisp, working across bespoke architecture and interiors as a tight four with associates Clelia Dal Col and Bogdan Nacu. The founding idea took shape on a hiking trip and over a quiet drink at the local pub, and the early jobs were small renovations for the people around them.
Architecture buck&simple (@buckandsimple). Photography Simon Whitbread (@simonwhitbreadphoto). Seen via @co_architecture_au.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.