With striking features both alien and familiar, a single-family home in Sydneys Vaucluse neighbourhood references a lost vernacular that once lined the coastThis project was shortlisted in the 2024 AR House awards. Read about the full shortlist hereAngular and telescopic in form, with a facade that appears to be made from corrugated steel, Shiplap House looks like a white spacecraft that has landed in Vaucluse, a quiet residential suburb in eastern Sydney. Upon close inspection, this single-family home is in fact lined with white timber boardings, serrated at the bottom like upturned picket fences a nod to the shiplap-clad fishermans cottages, built by European settlers, that once dominated the coast. The three-storey family house for five, including young children, is conceived by local architects Chenchow Little.A peninsula lined with a wealth of scenic beaches, Vaucluse is one of Sydneys most expensive neighbourhoods. In this car-dependent suburb, large detached houses share little more than their use of masonry. Read together, they are eclectic, ranging from single to multiple storeys, contrasting in shape, roof profile, colour and fenestration. Yet, assessed individually, each house lacks a coherent architectural language. Tony Chenchow, co-founder of Chenchow Little with Stephanie Little, describes the site as a case of identity-less suburban indigestion. In response, the architects have endeavoured to create a critical contextual response, or an architectural palate cleanser, in the words of Little.Shiplap House sits on a landlocked battle-axe-shaped subdivided plot. With sight-lines constrained by the surrounding houses, the house is cut and trimmed to have six of its facades running perpendicular to the gaps between, framing key views including to Sydney Harbour from the spaces within. To optimise views out, the house turns the usual arrangement on its head, placing its three bedrooms on the first floor, and its living and kitchen/dining rooms at the top. Connected by a sculpted concrete spiral staircase, the journey up from the entrance to the living quarters is a transition from private to shared spaces; from intimacy to openness. It is always filled with an abundance of light and reminders of the sea via the white painted boarding continuing from the exterior into the interior.Not only ornamental, the timber battens array differently when they are adjacent to the fixed angled glass windows, becoming louvre screens to facilitate natural ventilation across the floor plate. Making use of the thermal mass of concrete to keep the interior comfortable, the house employs a reverse brick veneer arrangement, placing the thermal barrier outside the structure, once again in contrast to the typical brick-clad mansions common in the locale. Expressed as a dado internally, the concrete upstand supports the flush white wooden wall boards throughout.Chenchow Little credits the success of the project to a daring client who prescribed little more than a broken plan, as opposed to the usual open floor plans inherently unsuitable for bringing up small children, and the clients willingness to explore the expression of not only individuality but history and by extension, of neighbourhood identity. Familiar in materiality yet alien in a clean, angular form, Shiplap House is a complete body of work weaved inside out by painted white wood boarding fulfilling both aesthetic and practical climatic functions. Bucking the Sydney suburban trend of decontextualised masonry mansions built en masse, it reinvents the private home as a new vernacular that assumes an unusual urban role in suburbia. Iconic yet sensitive, it is a masterful work that fits nowhere but its site.