A family holiday home at Pindimar Bay on the north shore of Port Stephens, New South Wales, has won a regional Master Builders Association award less than a month after its completion.

The large home was designed by Alexander Kinross-Rowe for his parents Phillip and Janet Rowe and their extended family. Construction was carried out by local family business, Lambert Building Pty Ltd, a specialist in architect designed residential projects.

It won the MBA Newcastle region award for best architect designed home A$500,000 to A$700,000.

One of the features of the home is the extensive use it makes of LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® cladding for roofing and walling.

"The home was built after a very extensive design process which began because the original house on the block was below the flood level," Alexander Kinross-Rowe said.

"My family investigated lifting the house and then altering it, but in the end the costs involved meant that it was best to start afresh."

"It was very much a family project, but I was able to inject some of my design ideas which I hadn't been able to activate with clients in my practice."

"It was a very site specific design because one side of the house faces south onto Port Stephens and the other side faces turpentines and paperbark trees."

"The large areas of cladding in CUSTOM ORB® profile were chosen to introduce texture, using colours selected from the COLORBOND® steel palette to match the colours of the site and the surrounds."

"We used lighter colours, Jasper® and Dune®, to be visible when viewing the house from the waterfront side and the darker colour, Ironstone®, on the woodland side."

Alexander Kinross-Rowe has frequently used LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® cladding as a featured element on residential projects he has designed in the Byron Bay area of northern New South Wales.

Apart from its ease of installation he is attracted to what he sees as its softness as a wall cladding and the way in which it changes colour as it reflects light.

Lambert Building Director, Craig Lambert, said his construction team which worked on the award winning house was quite familiar with the use of LYSAGHT CUSTOM ORB® profile as a wall cladding.

"The CUSTOM ORB® profile is a long time favourite," he said. "We've featured it for wall cladding as well as on roofs of homes which we've had designed and then built in the Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens area."

"Using steel wall cladding such as CUSTOM ORB® to its best effect is a challenge for the builder, because you have to be careful how it combines with brickwork, render or some other form of cladding."

"We have a very good team of tradesmen and they know how to get the detailing and flashing correct, not just from a waterproofing point of view, but to give the house the best possible aesthetics."

At the Pindimar Bay home the use of steel cladding has also been carried into the interior, in the form of LYSAGHT MINI ORB® profile in ZINCALUME® steel applied to laundry and WC walls.

"As for the WC, that was a bit of fun in terms of the dunny - the old outhouse," Alexander Kinross-Rowe said.

"I like using steel elements. There are some galvanised sections in the interior and the roof not only used CUSTOM ORB® profile cladding, but also some LYSAGHT TRIMDEK® on a low pitched section."