‘Simply sublime’: The mysterious hidden house that can be risky to visit

From the road, there is no hint of the architectural adventure called Buhrich House II hidden in bush on the waterfront of Sydney’s middle harbour that has won the Herald’s most beautiful heritage home.

“It’s simply sublime,” said architect Gabrielle Pelletier, a director of Sam Crawford Architects, as she entered the Castlecrag home that features a floating wall and a copper-clad, wave-shaped roof.

The small two-bedroom home, completed in 1972, was designed by architect Hugh Buhrich with his wife, Eva, an architect and columnist.

Visiting the house for the first time, Pelletier, who was one of five judges in the Herald’s most beautiful homes project, said it was an incredible expression of living and building in the bush in Sydney.

“It is both rational and irrational. It’s expressionist. And it is a complete experiment of materiality and design,” she said.

Like many Sydney architects, Pelletier had admired the Buhrich’s work from afar. The home received the most nominations out of about 220 homes suggested by our panel of 50 architects, heritage and design experts including the jury.

It was so influential that a major NSW award from the Institute for Architects for alterations and additions was named in Eva and Hugh Buhrich’s honour.

Architect Neil Durbach of Durbach Block Jaggers designed Holman House at Dover Heights which won the most beautiful modern home in the Herald’s project. He spoke of visiting Australia as a teenager and being inspired to become an architect after seeing the Opera House.

When it came to residential architecture, though, he didn’t get the same joy that the Opera House delivered until he visited Castlecrag’s Buhrich House II.

At a talk to celebrate the Durbach Block Jaggers’ 2026 Gold Medallion win from the Australian Institute of Architects last month – the highest national honour for architecture – Durbach recalled that “somebody knew something” about a mysterious hidden house somewhere in Sydney.

He discovered it did exist. “At the bottom of a long and winding road, overgrown and eucalyptically scented, was Hugh Buhrich’s house,” Durbach said. “The house was surprisingly small. By the time I had crossed the room and was standing on the precariously thin deck, I had fallen heels over head in love with this house.”

Both Buhrich and Holman houses pack an architectural punch from the outside but inside the living spaces feel small and intimate.

Like the other heritage homes profiled in the Herald’s beautiful homes – they needed to be built before 1990 to qualify – Buhrich House II is as adventurous as it is exuberant.

The bathroom is the most beautiful in the world, Pelletier said. It includes a shocking-red bathtub, sink and walls moulded from a single piece of fibreglass by Buhrich, who was a yacht lover.

Its wave-shaped front wall seems to hover in space while its external spiral stone stairs have no handrail nor does the narrow deck. “Dad wasn’t very strong on railings,” his son, Neil Buhrich, said.

They used to clamber up and down the stairs to the narrow deck that juts over a steep drop to the water’s edge.

Buhrich pointed to a railing that he had installed. “My friends, who are getting old, weren’t prepared to visit any more,” he said.

Buhrich and wife Lyn never tire of the view. “It changes throughout the day,” Buhrich said. Lyn likes to read in a long bentwood lounge chair covered in cowhide that was designed by her father-in-law.

Other architects who nominated the house were equally enthusiastic. Architect and academic Stephen Varady said though it was self-built with minimal means and limited materials, it was “unique, inspired, exuberant, yet extremely comfortable example of what is possible”.

Architect Sara Pearson said its joyful features make you want to live there. “The wild drop off the edge of the living room into Middle Harbour elevates everything,” Pearson said.

We announce the winners of Australia’s most beautiful homes (from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) on Friday.

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