THE Gables OASIS
A luxury two-storey residence designed for an irregular lot in Gables, where strong architectural expression had to be matched with a clear planning strategy and council-ready justification.
This project reflects the way Harry Design Studio works, combining design quality, site intelligence, and deep planning understanding to deliver outcomes that are both visually distinctive and practically approvable.
2 Wayfarer Road, Gables, NSW 2765
The Design Challenge
The site geometry presented a genuine design challenge. The brief required a high-end family home with strong street presence, refined form, and excellent day-to-day functionality, while also addressing council assessment concerns through a well-reasoned design response.
Rather than treating planning controls as a simple checklist, the design was developed around the intent of the controls, the site constraints, and the overall streetscape outcome.
Architectural Response
The final concept creates a bold and elegant facade composition, with clean contemporary lines, curved forms used with restraint, and a layered material palette that gives depth and identity.
Internally, the planning prioritises luxury living functionality, circulation, and spatial quality, not just room count.
A key design move was the treatment of natural light. In homes with a wide frontage, bringing daylight into the middle of the house is often a major challenge. Here, the architect resolved this through a corner void with glazing, drawing light deep into the centre of the home and allowing it to fall from the upper level into the main living zone below. The result is a house filled with soft, natural light, creating a bright, healthy atmosphere and strong sense of vitality throughout the living spaces.
Planning and Council Strategy
This project also demonstrates the importance of design teams who can communicate with Council professionally and persuasively.
For challenging sites, successful approval is not only about requesting variations, it is about presenting a design that clearly responds to the planning objectives, protects amenity, and delivers a positive built-form outcome.
Harry Design Studio prepared a design response that balanced architectural ambition with technical reasoning, helping secure an outcome that satisfied both council expectations and the client’s vision for an impressive home in Gables.
Why This Matters for Builders
For medium-sized and design-focused builders, the value of a design partner is not just in creating attractive images. It is in producing architecture that is buildable, approval-aware, and coordinated from the early concept stage.
This case study is a strong example of that approach, design excellence supported by planning insight, practical thinking, and long-term collaboration value.
