Split it, sell it, or find a way of keeping it in the family? That’s the question three sisters asked themselves when they inherited a property, built by their parents in the 1970s, on a plot of land near Home beach on Minjerribah/North Stradbroke Island.
The sisters had been holidaying at the house since they were children, and the site was “almost impossible to replicate”, says one sibling, who asked to remain anonymous. “We decided quite quickly we didn’t want to get rid of it,” she says. As the older building had been eaten by mycelium, the hard part was deciding what to do with it next.
When the architect Daniel Burnett from Brisbane’s Blok Modular viewed the house to discuss the owners’ vision for three units, the sisters took him to the beach, where they all got in their bathers and “sat around in the water for about two hours”, he says. Along with sharing memories, they made one request: equitable access to the beach – “or we’re going to have fights”.
“No matter how old you get, the sibling dynamic is still present,” he says. “They were quite unapologetic about that.”
Forming a committee of sorts, the sisters (who are in their 60s) assessed every design decision as one. “It was a unified force,” says Burnett. The result is a trio of two-storey terraces identical by design, from the hardwood floors to the light fixtures.
Each three-bedroom, two-bathroom unit was designed so the occupants would feel immersed in nature, says Burnett. “You can sit anywhere in that building – even though it’s a long skinny house – and feel like you’re on the beach,” he says.
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“It’s magic,” says one sister. “Right now I’m looking out over the sea watching the whales go by.”
Awareness of the natural environment extended to the home’s disaster-preparedness. Windows had to be triple glazed to fit fire zone safety requirements, for example, which the sisters say adds to the sense of privacy in each individual house. “Inside with the windows closed, you can’t hear anyone else,” says the sister.
Blok Three Sisters was named house of the year in 2025’s Houses awards. It’s an example of “stealth density”, says the architect John Ellway, one of the jurors. “You can see how the ideas in this [project] could be replicated and rolled out in a lot of different places.”
It could be used for “three families, three generations, or three friends. That’s what stood out for us,” Ellway says.
Designing each unit the same way, down to the furnishings, was a practical choice. “The more you customise, the higher the price gets,” says the sister. To decide which sibling got which property, they “went out to dinner and drew lots”.
They knew they wanted a prefabricated modular build because they’d seen how quick and efficient it could be. “Doing everything you can possibly do in a controlled environment reduces the disruption for delicate ecosystems,” like Stradbroke Island’s, says Burnett, who partnered with architect Stuart Vokes from Brisbane’s Vokes and Peters and builders Pagewood Projects to create modules that would be delivered and assembled on location.
“You can be a bit more ambitious about what you’re building because you’re not hanging off a ladder in the afternoon sun, and you can utilise the cranes and sophisticated machinery that’s installed in the factory rather than available on the back of a ute,” he says.
Local plumbers and electricians were employed to connect the building to services, and a small team was sent to complete cosmetic joins between the modules. But otherwise the homes are fully finished in the factory: “Every window, door, tile, joinery, tap, all the flooring.”
Built to budget and with readily available materials, it shows “a good project doesn’t necessarily have to be this luxurious flashy thing”, says Ellway. “Given that it’s prefab and modular, the other thing [the jury] acknowledged is that if the need came to move it, they could lift it up and take it somewhere else,” or raise the properties a metre off the ground.
“The modular build gave us timing certainty,” says the sister, as they first engaged with the architects shortly after Covid. The buildings were completed within a year.
“I think this project is exciting because it demonstrates a model for housing density,” says Burnett. “It shows it’s possible to make multi-storey, multi-residential housing in a factory at a very high standard that could be applied to other models, like social housing,” he says.
The architectural design “helps us maximise the magic”, says the sister. “Sitting on that double-height deck, looking toward the beach, laying on the couch reading a book, is really very beautiful.” At Christmas and Easter, all three siblings and their families come together on the big lawn on the beach side of the property.
“When we live in it, we face the beach, that lawn,” she says. “That’s our face to the world.”
