Anthony Gill and Jason Gibney have taken home top honors at the 2025 Habitus House of the Year awards, with Gill’s Clifton House winning the Habitus House of the Year and Gibney’s Amongst the Eucalypts receiving the Editor’s Choice Award.
These two New South Wales houses were among 26 shortlisted projects, and they offer a compelling dialogue about the state of housing in Australia in 2025.
Two Distinct Projects
Clifton House, located in Bondi, Sydney, deals with density, privacy, overlooking, and natural light, while Amongst the Eucalypts, situated near Seal Rocks, engages with wildlife, bushfires, and the natural environment.
Despite their differences, the two projects address conceptually similar issues and do so in similar architectural terms.
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Common Principles
The principles underpinning both projects are highly similar, with both architects emphasizing the importance of surroundings, whether it’s the casuarina forest and native wildlife at Amongst the Eucalypts or the possibility of overlooking neighbors at Clifton House.
Anthony Gill notes that clients often prioritize privacy, but he believes it’s about finding a balance between privacy and connections to the street and community.
Gill explains, “I’ve always thought privacy is slightly overrated… So, it’s about getting that balance right by solving it in certain areas and giving the clients comfort that they’re going to be able to inhabit it the way they want.”
Both projects also place a significant emphasis on setting design, albeit at different scales, with Gill curating interstitial moments of greenery behind fibreglass surfaces and Gibney setting the house up in the trees and crafting private planted areas.
Gibney describes his engagement with the setting by Seal Rocks, saying, “As you go up the hill, you lose sight of the lake. But then as you go higher and higher, it appears again – and now, it appears beyond the canopy of the trees.”
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Context and Humanity
According to Jason Gibney, good architecture is about context – and it’s about not taking the similarities literally.
Gibney concludes, “These are buildings in an Australian suburban area or an Australian bushland site.”
As the conversation between Gill and Gibney unfolds, it becomes clear that their projects, though distinct, share a common thread – a deep understanding of the Australian environment and a commitment to creating spaces that harmonize with their surroundings.
For now, Clifton House and Amongst the Eucalypts stand as examples of thoughtful design and the importance of considering relationships between built spaces and their surroundings.
