Sheldon Eco Retreat
Sheldon Eco-Retreat is a series of short term accommodations located within a protected koala habitat.
Project details
The first of the built forms is a fortified guest house enclosing hotel rooms, restaurant, day spa, library and tea room. This bold form marks the arrival point to the site and establishes a line of defence to the busy road which services the site. Passing through it’s deep threshold is an escape from the world. Its thick earthen walls and juxtaposing filigree screens are inspired by the landscape than building. Scales are manipulated from soaring voids to intimate spaces, perches to burrows: prospect and refuge.
As the guest moves through the site, the accommodation and sense of enclosure is stripped back. Simple cabins within the bushland form their own territory. Simple changes in vegetation provide a sense of identity and act as markers in the landscape.
If you venture even deeper within the site, the accommodation becomes nothing more than a platform and roof. A primitive habitation of landscape akin to camping.
A journey from rushed to casual, open to secluded, car to human and built to bush.