The 2021 House of the Year for the HIA Australian Housing Awards is Cloudbreak, which takes premium Gold Coast real estate to a new level, with this winning residence situated on an impressive cliff at Miami and being awarded the highest residential building award in Australia due to its incredible engineering. Gold Coast construction company Mactech Constructions was responsible for building the home, and it was nominated by a panel of judges due to its impressive size, ambition, and the extreme difficulty of turning an exposed coastal location into a luxury home.
Cloudbreak’s unique location and use of land make it stand out from other homes. The house itself is a five-storey duplex located on one of the most exposed coastal destinations, yet it has all the privacy and permanence of a standalone home. The lower level of the house features a Zen-like wellness center and a theatre, both of which flow directly into the cliff from the inside, giving great views of the hinterland. Above ground, the home rises through the various levels of the bedrooms, a master bedroom, and through the open-plan living spaces before finishing off with a rooftop terrace featuring a pool, spa, and helipad.
Not only does the overall design of this property evoke a sense of luxury, it also exhibits an impressive level of structural engineering artistry. By integrating a series of glass floor panels on the upper levels, the project’s designers have created a continuous vertical void that connects all levels of the house, allowing daylight to deeply penetrate the interior and resulting in a striking visual effect that makes the house appear very light.
This visual lightness, of course, has to be balanced against the fact that the house is in a very harsh oceanfront location with many natural elements such as high winds from blowing sea air, as well as the difficulty of building on such a steep upper surface (including the need for stairs to access levels of the house). Creating a building that has as much structural strength as safety while being visually aesthetically pleasing was no doubt a challenge for all who were involved in this project. The HIA Australian Townhouse Project of the Year award further supports that this project was well received by those who judged the final product.
Alongside other construction projects that have occurred on this site previously by multiple owners of this property, the castle house located in Miami Beach has also occupied the same location as Cloudbreak, and there were many other construction projects that occurred on this site prior to Cloudbreak being built. It’s a good thing for the new owners to know when buying Cloudbreak: there are multiple previous owners of this property. Throughout the years since the property was first purchased, these past owners have made various renovations, and they have been able to secure multiple permits from the planning and zoning offices. This history has allowed this property to have undergone numerous modifications, which helps to add to the attractiveness of this property as a finished product.
On the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, on October 14th at 6 p.m., the 2026 HIA Australian Housing Awards were presented to an audience of 650 industry leaders and exhibitors at a ceremony presided over by Jocelyn Martin, Managing Director of HIA, who congratulated all winners on their exceptional achievements in innovation through excellence in their field: construction practices, methods, design, and material selection. Although there were many projects that caused excitement and generated lots of buzz about their potential future impact, Cloudbreak was the most talked about of all. Certainly, there were other great accolades given out to projects throughout the continent, such as dementia-specific homes, luxury kitchens, backyards retreating to nature and innovative construction companies in their respective regions. All in all, these awards proved yet again that skilled craftspeople can surprise us with unique solutions that turn ordinary landscapes into extraordinary works of art. Cloudbreak, for instance, exemplifies this transformation, turning a cliff into an elegant masterpiece.
