Chic, Innovative and Built for Less

A Sydney home builder is showing how chic need not be expensive.

Innovation is rife in the leafy surrounds of Sydney’s Illawong with the creation of a rule breaking house in Fowler Road.

What’s more, it’s filled with innovation that the builder claims can be achieved at a fraction of normal building costs.

Mr William De Martrin Donos has only been in Australia from his native France for 11 years. A builder by trade then and now, Mr De Martrin Donos has been keen for some time to put his ideas to the test, and has done so with the completion of the striking 72 Fowler Road Illawong.

The house immediately makes a strong impression with the featured and structurally significant gabion walls, which works on so many levels including the look of the ‘caged walls’, as well as the organic response the stonework has to the leafy surrounds.

Ray White Menai agent Gavin Ottaway has been blown away by the design,

“No one’s really built anything like this before,” says Mr Ottaway. “It is absolutely silent inside and feels so light and airy. It’s a design no one really knows about.”

The design drew on Mr De Martarin’s French heritage and was accomplished using a range of international suppliers.

“The picture window, for instance, is 3.5m and double glazed. I sourced the glass in Germany, had the frames made in Spain, had it constructed in Poland - then shipped here and craned into position.”

Despite this international component, Mr De Martrin Donos says his aim was to prove that great design can cost less than standard design when you think outside the box.

He points out, for example, that the gambion elements cost just $100 a ton.

“If you think of this as a sort of 'spec' home, it would cost approximately $1.4-$1.6m to build it. I have done this for $850,000. And I’m building another, with similar aspects right now, also in Illawong,” said Mr De Martrin Donos

To hear the builder speak of his work is to hear a man delighted with his product. He is indeed thrilled to have had the chance to expand from his Granny Flat (Blue Gum Granny Flats), to building luxury homes.

“I’ve wanted to do it for so long - but no one was crazy enough to let me do it!”

The auction is scheduled for Saturday, October 5