Edge Hill, Cairns QLD 4870

Planchonella House is surrounded by the striking natural beauty of Queensland’s rainforest. Set in the desirable suburb of Edge Hill, Cairns, it is a highly crafted 240-square-metre house (on a 4,818-sqm block) with sculptural form and surprising spaces designed for the tropical landscape and climate. Unpredictable and joyful, it is, above all, breathtaking.

Planchonella House is borne from the drive, energy and vision of husband-and-wife team Jesse Bennett and Anne-Marie Campagnolo, described by the 2015 National Architecture Awards’ jury as “an architect/builder/inventor and an interior innovator at their combined best.” It represents Bennett and Campagnolo’s ‘total design’ ethos and uncompromising vision in which architecture, landscaping and interior design have become a single, unified, harmonious ‘total work of art.’

The couple has been deservedly awarded. Planchonella House won Australia’s top architectural honours with the Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture in the 2015 National Architecture Awards. It won numerous other awards on a state, national and international level; photographs and stories have been published in magazines worldwide; and it has been referenced alongside the world’s finest ‘tropical’ and ‘forest homes.’

But photographs of Planchonella House tell only half the story. The physical experience of being there, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the tropical rainforest, is the other half of the story and one that can’t be told from the photographs.