The other night a car mysteriously plummeted over the edge of The Gap under uncertain circumstances. Last week a retired chauffer was arrested in London to faces charges of throwing model Caroline Byrne over the same edge ten odd years ago. A little further south in Dover Heights and about forty five years ago, my grandmother brought up her five children in an unassuming bungalow that sat perched right on the cliff edge. One day a dog went over the side and their house was in the paper. The house has long since been renovated and subsumed by something larger and altogether more anonymous.

Now in the same position precisely one block further south, sits the Holman House by Durbach Block Architects.

The house is built out of a series of curves set in opposition to one another. A bent and split beam reaches out in an improbable cantilever to the north and south before folding in on itself to capture a small piece of outdoor space that steps down to the pool below. The time honoured parti of the flambouyant top sitting on a sturdy base is observed with the bedrooms bathrooms and etc bunkered in a stone base beneath the malformed clover.

Reminiscent of Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic, the house fliings itself over the edge and into the unknown. However, this time it is not held back by Leonardo di Caprio but by an equally hot core of service spaces.

Upper Floor Plan

Lower Floor Plan

The living spaces, both held back and flung out to sea by their languid curves, are the major events of the house. Telescopic full height windows pick out ocean territories to the north and south while the east is blinkered by a long horizontal strip window, defining the horizon.

Dover Heights is perhaps most remarkable for its anonymous suburban grid of housing sitting in one of the cities more picturesque settings - hardcore cliffs to the east and postcard views to the west. Greek Island it is not. A grid runs perpindicular from the ridgeline to the cliff, lined with houses that seem slightly embarrassed to be in such a position.

The Holman House on the other hand seems a naturally optimistic response to the cliff edge and it is not hard to imagine the type being repeated down the coast until the cliffs diminish at Bondi Beach. A kind of cantilevered, arcing, flying bastard revision of Santorini.

The top and bottom photos are mine, the rest, source here.