Straddie's prefab palace: How a modular marvel became Australia's top house
Three sisters who had grown up holidaying there wanted it rebuilt as a place where all three of their families could continue to enjoy the location and have equal access to the water.
'They said, 'You've seen the site, let's go to the most important bit.'
'We walked through the dunes to the beach and lay in the waves with them for a couple of hours.
'It was a wonderful meeting, and the end they said, 'you've got the job.''
The resulting building, a trio of three-bedroom terrace homes named Blok Three Sisters, was just awarded Australian House of the Year at the 2025 Houses Awards.
It also won the award for the best Apartment or Unit.
A project of Blok Modular with Vokes and Peters, the building was prefabricated from steel and timber in 12 modules at the Blok Modular factory in Carole Park and transported on trucks via the MV Minjerribah ferry.
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Sydney Morning Herald
02-08-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
Straddie's prefab palace: How a modular marvel became Australia's top house
When architects Daniel Burnett and Stuart Vokes went to North Stradbroke Island in 2021 to meet with some prospective clients, they found a crumbling 1970s beach shack overlooking Home Beach. Three sisters who had grown up holidaying there wanted it rebuilt as a place where all three of their families could continue to enjoy the location and have equal access to the water. 'They said, 'You've seen the site, let's go to the most important bit.' 'We walked through the dunes to the beach and lay in the waves with them for a couple of hours. 'It was a wonderful meeting, and the end they said, 'you've got the job.'' The resulting building, a trio of three-bedroom terrace homes named Blok Three Sisters, was just awarded Australian House of the Year at the 2025 Houses Awards. It also won the award for the best Apartment or Unit. A project of Blok Modular with Vokes and Peters, the building was prefabricated from steel and timber in 12 modules at the Blok Modular factory in Carole Park and transported on trucks via the MV Minjerribah ferry.
The Age
02-08-2025
- The Age
Straddie's prefab palace: How a modular marvel became Australia's top house
When architects Daniel Burnett and Stuart Vokes went to North Stradbroke Island in 2021 to meet with some prospective clients, they found a crumbling 1970s beach shack overlooking Home Beach. Three sisters who had grown up holidaying there wanted it rebuilt as a place where all three of their families could continue to enjoy the location and have equal access to the water. 'They said, 'You've seen the site, let's go to the most important bit.' 'We walked through the dunes to the beach and lay in the waves with them for a couple of hours. 'It was a wonderful meeting, and the end they said, 'you've got the job.'' The resulting building, a trio of three-bedroom terrace homes named Blok Three Sisters, was just awarded Australian House of the Year at the 2025 Houses Awards. It also won the award for the best Apartment or Unit. A project of Blok Modular with Vokes and Peters, the building was prefabricated from steel and timber in 12 modules at the Blok Modular factory in Carole Park and transported on trucks via the MV Minjerribah ferry.
The Age
01-08-2025
- The Age
A cottage in Carlton and a tiny cabin among the gum trees: Victoria's best homes
A reimagined 1870s workers cottage, a suburban house wrapped in vines and a tiny cabin perched on stilts among gum trees are the Victorian winners of Australia's most outstanding new homes in the 2025 Houses Awards. Carlton Cottage by Lovell Burton Architecture is unprepossessing from the street but opens up into an airy space when you enter with the house's flexibility for family living leading it to win the House Alteration and Addition Under 200 Square Metres category. Partners in their architecture firm and in life, Joseph Lovell and Stephanie Burton, have two young children and designed the home to be adaptable to the changing needs of their family as their children grow up. They bought the 'pretty dilapidated' 1870s workers cottage on Canning Street and started removing the lean to extensions tacked on the back. Lovell and Burton kept the footprint of the original cottage and then opened up the rear of the house to a large living and kitchen area with a mezzanine bedroom and ensuite above which can be shut off with wooden acoustic panels. Loading They wanted the reworked 1870s workers' cottage to be flexible to their evolving needs by adopting a 'loose fit' design approach that does not prescribe how each room is used. 'We kind of had this term loose fit at the very start of the project,' Burton says. 'Obviously things like bathrooms and kitchens, you can't really move them, but we wanted to make everything else as inherently flexible as we could.' Large pivot doors, and a sliding fence panel, allow family life to spill out into the garden and, beyond, to the laneway, increasing living space.
