The Palm Beach House

To overcome the problems of building on a cliff face with numerous rock shelves, architect Ken Woolley designed a timber 'tower' with multiple outdoor decks and balconies that connect the house to the cliff face.

Ken Woolley is a renowned and multi-award winning architect active between the 1950s and the 1990s. In the 1960s he worked for the project home company Pettit & Sevitt, and thousands of homes have been built from his designs. Between 1984 and 1985 he designed and built a family weekender at Palm Beach which received the Wilkinson Award in 1987.

I liked the notion of having a small footprint, and the idea of a tower-like house, which would in itself be a staircase up the cliff terminating in a bridge at the back, evolved.

Ken Woolley quoted in 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses: three decades of domestic architecture, by Karen McCartney