Rebels RestA hilltop hideaway

Rebels Rest is a mountainside island home for a Canadian entrepreneur who spends as much time outdoors kite surfing as he does indoors, tending to his businesses. As such, the design needed to be an open and welcoming interpretation of island living, which would focus on the enjoyment of cooking, entertaining and living outdoors, all undercover.

The lazy Z-shaped roof shades three loosely connected volumes of accommodation; the outermost blocks containing the bedrooms with the central volume being an large open-plan kitchen, living and dining space, which has been kinked to capture the best views north-west of the reef as well as east along the length of Grace Bay Beach. The natural shingle roof snakes above these volumes with vaulted timber clad ceilings, creating pockets of outdoor shaded spaces including an up-lit shallow reflecting pool to allow dancing patterns of water on the interior soffits at night.

The interior spaces are connected by a single weatherproof breezeway that meanders with the roofline, allowing the cooling breeze and also sounds of nature to pervade the circulation spaces. This veiled corridor captures framed views through the building from the south to the north, as well as sublime elevated views of the ocean and the arcing surf of the third largest barrier reef in the world.