What the slope cost before anyone dug

The brief will sound very familiar.

A contemporary family home. Generous living. A pool. Outdoor entertaining. The finish of a quality home.

The site had different ideas.

The block fell steeply to the street, and on a sloping site, levels are money.

Excavation, retaining, rebuilding a level, holding one that already exists. Each costs a great deal and most of it disappears into the ground before the house feels any better to live in.

So most of the early work was deciding what not to spend it on.

Keep the existing house, or take it down. Flat roof, or pitched. Which savings were real, and which only looked like savings until the excavator arrived.

The answer was not to force the house onto the site. It was to listen to the levels that were already there.

The layout followed the fall of the block. Structure was kept simple where the site allowed. Approval risk was dealt with early, before it became expensive.

Some of the first ideas did not make it.

But the ones that mattered did.

The space. The light. The pool close to the living area. The feeling that an ordinary day in the house would be easy.

That was the point of the project. Not to win against the site, but to stop fighting it long enough to make a good house possible.