How This London Family Refreshed A Community Home

The unusual family home of Céline Dalcher Wilkhu and her husband, Taran Wilkhu, clings close to the summit of a steep hill in southeast London, offering panoramic views across the city from their open-plan living room.

The timber-framed, cabin-style property, influenced by traditional Japanese architecture and recently upgraded to meet the needs of a 21st-century family, is a curiosity among the Honor Oak neighbourhood’s mostly Victorian and Edwardian homes. It is also part of the legacy of an idealistic, postwar experiment in empowerment through house building.

It was built in the early 1970s by an intrepid group of amateur self-builders guided by the German-born modernist architect Walter Segal, who moved to London in 1936. His idea was that people in need of homes could be encouraged to build their own small developments on spare public land, according to the Walter Segal Self Build Trust, which was set up to chronicle his work.

The lightweight houses could be built with basic materials and were raised on small stilts to minimize groundwork and allow them to be constructed on steep slopes. “The idea was to empower people who were not builders to build their own houses through a community,” said Mrs. Dalcher Wilkhu, an exhibition designer at the Royal Museum Greenwich.

In the late 1970s, the London borough of Lewisham decided to put Mr. Segal’s ideas into practice. It placed an advertisement in a local magazine for people in “housing need” who would be interested in building their own homes on public land. Work began on the first of four sites in 1979.

Mr. Wilkhu and Mrs. Dalcher Wilkhu, both 43, had become fans of Mr. Segal’s work after visiting one of his Lewisham projects during London Open House Weekend, an annual event during which architecturally interesting buildings are opened to the public. “We walked in and just said ‘wow,’ ” recalled Mr. Wilkhu, a photographer. “We loved the architecture, we loved the light, and we loved the sense of community. We immediately said we would love to live in one of these houses.” (Mr. Wilkhu later collaborated as photographer on a book about Mr. Segal’s self-build homes, “Walters Way & Segal Close,” in 2017.)

In 2011, a house designed by Mr. Segal in Honor Oak came up for sale. The couple, who have two sons, Sohan, now 10, and Nayan, now 7, paid about $538,000 for the 1,076-square-foot house with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. They bought the house with knowledge of its shortcomings. One of its bedrooms was tiny while the second bathroom was “literally just a cupboard with a shower in it,” said Mrs. Dalcher Wilkhu. “It always felt a bit cramped. We always knew we would want more space—but not necessarily more rooms.”

In 2018, they enlisted the help of architect Elizabeth Fraher, director of Fraher & Findlay. She designed a two-story, 431-square-foot addition. This gave them a large open-plan kitchen, living and dining room on the first floor.

The boys, who had small separate bedrooms at the front of the house, asked that the wall between them be removed so they could share a single larger room. The tiny shower room was enlarged. The new basement level, accessed by a flight of pine-plywood-clad stairs, contains an office that leads out to the backyard, and a room used for yoga and music.

THE BUDGET

Groundwork and foundations: approx. $28,078
Windows: approx. $18,790
Roof: approx. $11,228
Addition and internal decoration: approx. $149,600
Professional fees: $22,470
Total: About $230,000

Work began in February 2019 and was done just before Britain entered its first national lockdown in March 2020. Mrs. Dalcher Wilkhu acted as project manager. The project cost around $170,000. “Luckily for us nothing really went horribly wrong,” she said. Like Mr. Segal before them, they stuck to simple, inexpensive materials to keep costs in line.

The exterior of the addition is clad in corrugated iron, while its interior has been lined with pine plywood that has been lightly whitewashed. The original dark timber parquet flooring in the living room was replaced with more contemporary pine floorboards. The kitchen cupboards are also made from pine plywood, although they did add a dash of luxury with a terrazzo marble work top.

Mr. Segal died in 1985 and he did not witness the gentrification of Honor Oak, where prices have risen from an average of around $539,000 in 2011, when the couple moved in, to $1,281,000 at the start of this year, according to property portal Rightmove. The most expensive sale on their street was in 2019, said Mr. Wilkhu, and the house fetched around $1.1 million.

Mr. Wilkhu estimates their home is probably now worth about $1.87 million, although they have no plans to sell. “As well as the house itself, what we have here is a real sense of community,” he said. “We know all the neighbours, we have a WhatsApp group, and it just feels like a very friendly, safe way to live in a city.”

*All imagery by Taran Wilkhu.

A breathtaking view and a lush quarter-acre block are high up the wish list with any lifestyle property, but this contemporary Buderim residence takes things to another level.

Designed and built by owners Stu and Nat Faid, the Sunshine Coast home reflects their vision and incredible attention to detail.

As an architect and designer, Nat believes a prime position deserves an incredible project.

“The heart of the house is undoubtedly the living area and expansive deck. At over 100sq m and elevated more than 6m above the ground, you literally feel like you’re floating. We love how the views stretch from the Glass House Mountains along the coastline to Mooloolaba. Across the ocean, you can even see the sandbanks on Moreton Island,” she says.

While the views and the 1024sq m land parcel make their mark, it’s the suspended 12m heated shipping container swimming pool that’s making waves locally.

“When people arrive, the first thing they do is look up,” Nat adds.

After purchasing the property in 2021, the pair knew the existing house wouldn’t live up to their family of four, but they fell in love with the location and outlook so decided to adapt.

Initially, the pool’s unique design was simply a reaction to an everyday Queensland problem, but ultimately became a feature.

“The pool was at first a product of practicality. We wanted to be able to watch the kids in the pool from the house, but to do that required elevating the pool more than six meters off the ground,” Stu says.

“When we looked at the engineering required, it conflicted with our minimal-touch ethos in preserving the land and the visual aesthetic of the finished design. What followed was a lot of searching for a solution, and as luck would have it, the answer was almost on our doorstep.”

Shipping Container Pools seemed like a no-brainer answer to the pool problem. Having moved internationally multiple times, the couple saw an opportunity to weave their personal story into the fabric of their new home.

“The opportunity to incorporate a nod to that chapter of our life into the build was too good to miss,” he says.

“It also unashamedly reinforces the origins of the pool construction, which ties into the rest of the design in the house. Throughout the home, we have embraced where the old meets the new, we have not tried to blend, cover or hide the origins of the home, we have chosen instead to make sure the evolution of the house is clear to see.”

The Faids’ global family journey is evident throughout the home, from the grand Middle Eastern entry doors sourced from Dubai where the couple once lived, to the remarkable views from the Glass House Mountains to Mooloolaba.

Created to enjoy every season, the house has a space for all eventualities with an open plan living area spilling out to the full-width deck and pool, a sleek kitchen with an Ilve integrated fridge and freezer, Bosch ovens, an induction cooktop, built-in coffee machine and microwave, two dishwashers, filtered water and a butler’s pantry.

Four spacious bedrooms each have built-ins, the main features a large ensuite with twin vanities and two more bedrooms share a“Jack and Jill” style bathroom. There is also a third full bathroom.

The Buderim home is 12.5kms from Mooloolaba and the Mooloolaba River National Park with the Sunshine Coast Airport 13.5kms to the north, however Stu adds that there is rarely a reason to leave.

“It would be fair to say that apart from popping down the hill to go to the beach, we often go days without ever leaving the village. It’s really is a wonderful spot.”

Packed with mod cons, the Buderim home also features six-zone ducted air-conditioning, engineered oak floors and a double-sided Stuv wood-burning fireplace, a mudroom, heated floors and sensor lights in the bathrooms. There is also a private elevator, solar power and battery, as well as landscaped gardens and a large lock up garage and shed.

The property at 10 Orient Court, Buderim is listed with Zoe Byrne and Greg Ward from Ray White Buderim and will go to auction on September 22 at 9am at Mercedes-Benz Sunshine Coast, 65 Maroochy Blvd, Maroochydore.

How This London Family Refreshed A Community Home

The Walter Segal project has been renovated for modern living.

THE BUDGET

This sky-high home on the Sunshine Coast with iconic shipping container pool is a testament to modern design and engineering.