Nostalgia by the sea
Luxury and low maintenance don’t always go hand-in-hand, but that was the brief for this seaside abode that evokes summers of bygone eras.
Normanville is a typical beachside town through and through — from the surf club to the relaxed main street and the no-fuss beach houses that give holidaymakers a base from which to relax after long days on the sand and in the water.
Amongst it all, there’s one abode redefining the strip that runs from the jetty and along the street.
Almost every person walking past on their way to Normanville Beach stops to peek through the gate to catch a glimpse of this refreshing new build, completed in 2023 and shortlisted in the 2024 Houses Awards.
The home’s designer and owner, Adam Johnson, helped to design a communal dining space with a bench that will hold lots of guests.
And through the gate, they see just a small inkling of what’s inside this modern, yet retro-inspired, coastal delight by designer Adam Johnson. The home’s exterior is made up of long, thin sandy-toned Krause Emperor bricks that sit against battens of iron ash timber detailing, a material with a hardiness that stands up against the salty coastal air.
The butterfly roof is striking, sweeping up to the tall sides of the house and meeting at a lower point along the spine of the home. If you look beyond the grand design, smaller, clever elements begin to present themselves. There’s the unapologetic use of timber on the gates of the carport, the side of the home and on the underside of the roof.
Adam says the initial design was a question of standing out from the crowd.
“If you’re going to do it, do it right,” Adam says. The seed for the project was planted after some friends bought a beach house at Carrickalinga and Adam’s wife Annie was curious to explore doing the same.
The home’s kitchen features a stainless steel island bench top — perfect for the ease of filleting a fresh catch.
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“Two weeks later, we put an offer on the land — it had only just become available,” he explains. “Covid really illustrated that we have so many great towns nearby. I’d go to Normanville as a kid and stay at the caravan park, so I had vague memories of it. But I went down before discovering the block and it was just beautiful.”
As you enter through the home’s tall timber-panelled front door, you pass by an assortment of native shrubs, including one that informs the colour palette inside.
The coastal banksia (banksia integrifolia) displays almost all of the tones in the home, from the green of the leaf mirrored in the Jardan Valley sofa, to the light underside of the foliage that is similar to the bricks. A cutting from the bush sits in a Robert Gordon vase on a table from Jardan.
Adam sought to recreate the louvre panel doors of his parents’ 1970s pantry, discovering it was more complicated than anticipated. Enter Taku — a Japanese-trained woodworker who was able to meet the brief.
The home’s colour palette has been informed by native plants on the exterior, and flows right through, from the browns of the timber to the olive of the furniture.
“Taku also worked on the joinery at Fugazzi. There’s so much reward in finding the craftspeople who share your passion for detail. You’ve got to let people focus on their craft and respect their process.”
All around the home, designers and makers are championed, starting with the builder, Mark Frigo from BUILDinc. Next, Adam chose Knoll Cesca dining chairs, Akari washi paper pendant lights, Jardan beds and soft furnishings, and custom timber door handles by Tasmanian makers, In-Teria.
“I think it’s important to respect other designers by using the authentic products,” he says
The butterfly roof turns into a stunning spine of the home inside, complete with exposed bolts for an interesting detail.
A bit of a design jack-of-all-trades, Adam has worked across advertising, graphic design and building/interior design. If you’ve seen a billboard — or any other graphics — for automotive company Audi in Australia, that’s Adam’s work.
“I don’t have a degree in architecture, but I was working on projects where I saw architects or designers doing things,” he says. “You get to a point where you go, ‘Who says you can’t?’.”
The first interiors project he worked on was Peel Street bar Clever Little Tailor. Adam was asked to design the logo and that escalated to helping to design and build the interior.
“I probably made a lot of mistakes, but I learnt a lot,” he says. “You realise very quickly how to do it and then onto the next.”
Next came Australian Fashion Labels’ BNKR store and a few other projects, and then, the giant leap to his own home at Stirling, which was shortlisted for a Houses Award in 2019.
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The Krause bricks and extensive use of timber extends throughout the home, including the master bedroom, softened by sandy-toned furnishings.
“With every piece of design — whether it’s advertising, graphic design, or anything else, you just want someone to feel something, and if a space does that, a piece of communication does that, a tactile piece of furniture does that, what is the feeling?,” he says.
For Stirling — also a BUILDinc project — it was the feeling of being in a treehouse with simple, natural elements, and for Normanville, it was a retro summer feeling.
Adam and Annie, a lawyer, rent the home to holidaymakers, as well as enjoying their own time there with young daughter Lily, so everything has to be fairly low maintenance and able to withstand lots of guests.
“It doesn’t matter if kids with wet bodies are sitting on the couch,” Adam says. “You’re going to have sand come through, so you just want to be able to blow it out.
“The kitchen bench is stainless steel so you can just cut fish on it and it’s a big work space.”
An olive-toned Jardan sofa is hardy enough to withstand the sandy feet and wet bodies that come in from the beach.
The kitchen is a consistent blend of stainless steel and timber — the cool and warm tones balancing each other, while jet diffuser air conditioning vents add a slight industrial feel.
“I hate standard AC vents because they’re always so clunky and an afterthought — they should be incorporated into the design of a room,” Adam says.
That same attention to detail is found with the exposed bolts in the timber ceiling beams.
“Some trades asked me, ‘Are you going to leave them like that?’. It’s the same question they asked about all the concrete
at Stirling.”
But this is such a key to Adam’s design — the championing of the raw elements and details. Materiality is a strong theme in the home — timber ceilings throughout allow for a feeling of warmth, without the need to lower the ceiling height.
That same Krause brick is used on the interior, with warmer toned bricks interspersed among cooler toned bricks, due to the handmade nature of the product. In the open kitchen, living and dining space, Adam designed a leather bench-style seat with the help of McConnell’s upholstery, bringing a sense of community at meal time. Through billowy linen curtains, the dining space looks out to a courtyard area with an outdoor shower to wash off after strolling in from the beach, and a table for lazing or entertaining in the fresh air.
The striking olive tiles in the bathroom are from Artedomus in Melbourne and are set off against the terrazzo flooring and timber panelling.
The bathrooms feature square olive tiles from Artedomus on the walls, along with timber panelling, and green-toned terrazzo tiles on the floors. Marble sourced from CDK Stone on the vanities again ties those warm and cool tones together.
For Adam, the brief was about much more than just liveability.
“It has to feel as if you’re contributing something positive to the community that you’re going to be spending time in,” he says. “It’s not about resale value — it’s about improving the lot for everyone who has to look at it.”
This article first appeared in the January 2025 issue of SALIFE magazine.
