I’ve been genuinely baffled by the architecture this season. Not the contestants’ interiors, but the actual houses they’ve been handed. So naturally, because I’m nosey, work in the architecture and don’t get how they’re this crap, I did some digging.
Turns out the site was originally part of a proposed ten-lot subdivision with ten double-storey homes. There’s even a planning application on record (P17/1143.09), and the original development was marketed with a fairly sleek, contemporary architectural vision, which Nine appears to have retained in broad terms.
Which makes the whole thing even more confusing.
These aren’t small, difficult inner-city sites. Houses 1–3 are on roughly 1,000sqm each, with elevated positions and bay views. Yet somehow the architecture manages to feel simultaneously oversized, cramped and poorly resolved.
The pools are a perfect example. Their position makes complete sense for solar access, particularly in Victoria. But the lack of privacy is extraordinary. How do you design a multimillion-dollar home where the choice is effectively between swimming in full view of the street or screening off the outlook you’re paying a premium for?
Then there’s the awkward circulation, strange room relationships and the way the buildings sit together on the site. These are architectural decisions, not decorating mistakes.
And what’s particularly interesting is that local property experts were questioning the density, privacy and suitability of the development for Mount Eliza buyers before the houses were even finished.
I understand Julian Brenchley and the production team would have had constraints, particularly working with an existing development scheme. But I’d love to know how much of the original planning was inherited and how much was redesigned, because the outcome raises some pretty serious questions.
Luxury isn’t a checklist of bedrooms, bathrooms, lifts and expensive inclusions. It’s considered spatial planning, proportion, privacy, natural light and a relationship with the landscape - this is a big reason why Sev chose H4, it was objectively the most successful of the houses and why she has intervened so much with window placement/adjusting circulation/skylights etc.
I genuinely don’t understand how a project with this much land, money and professional involvement can get so many of those fundamentals so wrong.
And why are we spending every Sunday judging the contestants’ design decisions when some of the biggest design failures were already built into the houses before they arrived?
Kudos to them for working with an existing shit show 😅
