Palm Garden House Invites us to Imagine a Simpler Life Lived more in Tune with Nature

Built between 1974 and 1976, Palm Garden House by architect Richard Leplastrier, invites us to imagine a simpler life lived more in tune with nature. Tucked into a gully on Sydney’s northern beaches, Palm Garden House is a hidden sanctuary designed for a professional client by an architect and educator who has studiously shunned the spotlight over his long and influential career. Behind rammed- earth walls, within the embrace of ancient palms, the house all but dissolves into a sun- dappled landscape. Leplastrier and some shipwright friends built the house. Its two rooms are joined by a central corridor, along which a steel framing system supports the two skins of the house: its timber and canvas linings, and a twin roof of rolled copper.

All the essential elements of domesticity are compressed into a rammed-earth wall along the corridor, so the overwhelming experience is of the contemplative garden: the trickle of water, the rustle of leaves, shadows playing on fabric walls. For 45 years it has nourished its owner, who shares it still with the birds, insects and water dragons that inhabit this cool, meandering oasis. The years have brought not decay, but a lustre to its timbers, and a lichen colony to the retractable canvas roof. All else is thoughtfully preserved. In a post-pandemic world questioning values and ways of life, Palm Garden House is a reminder of our elemental selves, and a touchstone to architecture that is built with nature, not against it.

Project Information

Architect: Richard Leplastrier

Photography: Kathlyn Loseby and Peter Salhani