Award winning Karoola set to topple Blue Mountains price record

Award winning Karoola set to topple Blue Mountains price record
Staff ReporterDecember 8, 2020

The residential Blue Mountain price record has been untouched for a decade, but that's set to change with the listing of Karoola, the 2008 Wilkinson Award-winning home in Leura.

The striking home incorporates the existing 1900s cottage in its James Stockwell-design. 

It has a price guide of $5 million through Belle Property Leura agent Matt Grima.

Award winning Karoola set to topple Blue Mountains price record

It was designed for former Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox and his wife Christine to accommodate their big family – their children, grandchildren along with friends.

Inspired by the geology and landscape of the Blue Mountains, Karoola was constructed with rammed earth, crushed sandstone, blackbutt and hoop pine timbers.

The sustainable single storey main residence was built on its 5,900 square metre Malvern Road holding.

Award winning Karoola set to topple Blue Mountains price record

The main home has five bedrooms, each with garden and bushland views. There's granite bathrooms with Japanese inspired bathtubs.

As well as an opening verandah roof, the home was created in a solar passive design, where windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter and reject heat in the summer.

There's also a multi-purpose garden studio for painting and music.

Award winning Karoola set to topple Blue Mountains price record

The house design uses a Japanese method called discontinuous unity - developed in the 1940's by architects Yoshuzaki and Sakazura - for the incomplete separation of living spaces from one another.

The home was constructed by master builder Gerald Verhoeven, with Professor Max Irvine engineering its verandah roofing. Craig Burton's landscape design saw zoning for endemic and exotic plantings. 

The Blue Mountains price record was set in 2008 when Carramar, a 1900s weatherboard at Wentworth Falls, sold for $3.3 million.

Only four homes in the Blue Mountains region sold for over $2 million last year, although that's well up on the one sold in 2016.

This article first appeared in The Weekend Australian. 

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