Maleny House, a contemporary Sunshine Coast hinterland home that featured on ABC's Dream Houses Australia, has hit the market.
It is offered for the first time since it was constructed nearly a decade ago.
Queensland Sotheby's agents Adrian Kirwan and Hannah Dodds are marketing the home which Brisbane couple, banker Robert Hadley and his wife, Anne commissioned from their then base in Romania.
The design of the home, set 40 kilometres inland from the coast in picture-postcard lush dairy country, merges contemporary Australian design with a Japanese-inspired cultural aesthetic.
Steve Guthrie and Lindy Atkin from Noosa-based Bark Design Architects designed it on the 2,000 square metre block at Wootha which had been bought in 2005.
"We just stumbled on this block of land and we couldn't resist," Robert Hadley recalled, adding they had been inspired through the years by designs of Lindsay and Kerry Clare, Adrian Poole, John Mainwaring and Glenn Murcutt.
After living in cities for 15 years across three different countries, the couple had decided that they wanted a quieter life.
It was built with the wabi-sabi design approach by local builder Nathan Quail.
The wabi-sabi design is described as one of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, with characteristics including asymmetry, roughness, modesty and intimacy.
"It has a simple beauty, an Asian aesthetic with an Australian touch," Robert explains.
"We were interested in the Zen philosophy of tranquiility and simplicity in the garden and the house overall.
Over the 16 month build, the couple only visited the site twice.
"We trusted our architects and they delivered," Anne said.
Robert and Anne communicated with architects Stuart Guthrie and Lindy Atkin by e-mail.
"The brief that Robert and Anne gave us was incredibly detailed," Guthrie recalled when the design was aired on the popular ABC series in 2012.
"Sometimes have a brief which is a single A4 page but this was a substantial document."
"It was an amazing brief," noted Lindy.
Maleny House was inspired by houses the couple have lived in throughout the world. They've also called Singapore and Amsterdam home before settling back in Australia.
Featuring modernist architecture of the mid 20th century, Maleny House is made up of a series of inter-connected pavilions.
"The layout of the house is essentially a central courtyard," says Atkin.
The living pavilion on the ground level contains the kitchen, dining and lounge area. Two of the three bedrooms sit upstairs.
"The kitchen is the heart of the house," Atkin suggested.
A glass framed floating walkway leads to the master bedroom which features sliding shojis which screen a large void to the living area below.
On the opposite side of the courtyard is a separate pavilion, which homes a guest room as well as a study or music room, enclosed in certified plantation-grown plywood to enhance acoustics.
Screens and walkways blend the structures comprised of glass, space-grey Australian corrugated steel and reinforced concrete.
A gabion wall, handcrafted by a stonemason, partially screens the home from public view.
Walls in the home slide away to meld indoor and outdoor spaces.
Despite being solidly anchored the earth below, Maleny House floats above the ground, and has uninterrupted views across the Glass House Mountains National Park and as far as Moreton Bay.
This article was first published in the Weekend Australian.
