These are the best new houses in NSW. Which would you choose?

A new home on NSW’s central coast that provided a family with a bush haven during COVID has been awarded the highest award for best new house.

The Wilkinson Award for residential architecture in the 2024 NSW Architecture Awards was awarded on Friday night to a home designed by Melissa Bright of Studio Bright.

Completed in 2019, the home was modest in scale but generous in nature, the jury said.

The view from inside Maitland Bay House.Credit: Rory Gardiner

Surrounded by gum trees, near Bouddi National Park and overlooking Maitland Bay, the home celebrated the majesty and the colours of the angophora – with the bricks echoing the mottled bark of these trees.

“I don’t believe you can achieve good architecture without thinking about landscape,” Bright told the Local Project.

It was selected from a shortlist of 15 homes for the new home category of the annual state awards by the NSW Chapter of the Institute of Architects.

Compared to many large homes, the Maitland Bay house has cosy spots: Window boxes provide a quiet spot to read a book and take in the view of the coast and trees, and a sunken living room is filled with children’s books and toys.

To decide the winners, the jury of architects, Jon Jacka, Rory Brooks and Caroline Kite of Studio KaaKi, and this reporter spent a week travelling across NSW to visit 15 shortlisted homes.

Here’s a gallery of the winners and commended homes. Read more details about the other properties below and vote for your favourite.

• Clifton House in Bondi by Anthony Gill Architects was a “a jewel of a family home”, said the jury. It recently sold for $10.7 million.
• Blok Belongil by Blok Modular with Vokes and Peters at Byron Bay. The modular building with a triangular shape challenged typical building methods and assumptions about the shape of buildings that arrive on the back of a truck.
• Shed House by Breakspear Architecture in Sydney’s Earlwood was an alternative housing model for our suburbs, partly inspired by Nino Sydney’s Beachcomber designs of the 1950s and 1960s. Designed around an internal courtyard, the jury said it was an environmentally responsive housing type set to change our suburbs for the better.
• Kidman Lane by Plus Minus Design in Paddington was modest in budget, but rich in detail, the jury said. Neighbours thought the home renovated the entire street.

Another four homes were commended:

• Shiplap House by Chenchow Little near the Macquarie Lighthouse in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. It won Houses magazine’s 2023 prize for best house larger than 200 square metres;
• Little Young Street by David Langston-Jones in Sydney’s Surry Hills is 155 square metres, and features an authentic Shogun-style raked garden, and;
• Two homes by Incidental Architecture: Irrawaddy in Chatswood, a large family home for a family of eight, and Fish River House, west of the Blue Mountains.

Read more

Stephen wanted a big shed with his new home. So he got one – inside the house

From sheds and chook pens to the unlikely star of an $11 million Bondi home

Dunny lanes of Sydney: Hidden opportunity could address housing crisis

The glam Byron beach house that arrived on a truck, and went up in a day

How to make the most of small spaces without upsetting the neighbours

Sport and architecture: It’s a slam dunk in the Olympics of NSW building design

Julie Power was a lay juror for the new houses category of the 2024 NSW Architecture Awards.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.