Runway House

Project Overview

On a private airpark lot at Kybong, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland, Quorum Studios was engaged to design and document a home that does something most residential briefs never ask for: park the plane next door to the kitchen.

The result is a hangar and a home that read as one composed project rather than two separate buildings — a full-scale aircraft hangar on one end, and a comfortable, light-filled family home on the other, joined by a generous covered outdoor deck that mediates between them.

It's a project built around a very specific way of living: where the daily routine includes walking out of the kitchen, across the deck, and straight into the hangar.

The Brief

The clients — aviation enthusiasts relocating to a dedicated airpark community — needed a 24m x 20m aircraft hangar with the clearances and access for a fixed-wing aircraft, alongside a comfortable three-bedroom home. Critically, the two needed to feel connected rather than bolted together: one address, one architectural language, a shared material and detailing approach running from hangar to house.

The brief also called for a home that suited rural-residential life on a larger acreage block: indoor-outdoor living, a wraparound covered deck for entertaining, durable low-maintenance materials suited to a semi-rural environment, and full compliance with Liveable Housing Design Standards for long-term accessibility.

Design Response

The design resolves the hangar-and-house relationship through a shared material and detailing language rather than a single unbroken roofline — each volume is scaled to its own function, the hangar tall and broad-spanned, the dwelling more domestic in proportion. Rather than disguising the shed origins of the structure, the design leans into them — corrugated Colorbond cladding and exposed structural columns carry through both volumes, with timber screening, vertical battens, and a warm timber-lined soffit signalling the shift into residential territory.

A full-width covered deck, framed in hardwood decking and supported on a slender structural steel column line, forms the connective tissue between the two functions. It's deep enough for a full outdoor dining and lounge setting, oriented to capture the northern light and the hangar's day-to-day activity, and finished with a timber ceiling lining that warms what is otherwise a robust, industrial material palette.

Internally, the home is planned as a simple linear sequence — open-plan kitchen, dining and living opening directly onto the deck, with bedrooms arranged along the southern edge for privacy and thermal performance. Full-height glazing along the northern face blurs the line between inside and the surrounding eucalypt landscape, while a freestanding fireplace flue anchors the living space.

Key Features

• 24m x 20m Class 10a aircraft hangar with full-height access doors, integrated workshop space, and direct connection to the residence

• Class 1a dwelling with open-plan living, three bedrooms, and a Liveable Housing Design Standard–compliant step-free access path through the garage

• Shared architectural language across hangar and house — matching Colorbond cladding, exposed structural columns, and consistent detailing unify the two volumes without relying on a single continuous roofline

• Full-width covered hardwood deck, the architectural and social hinge between hangar and home

• Mixed cladding palette — corrugated Colorbond steel, vertical timber battens, and Cemintel woodgrain panelling — balancing shed-grade durability with residential warmth

• 45,000L rainwater tank and on-site wastewater treatment system, suited to the rural-residential, unsewered context

• Engineered for Wind Region B1 / Terrain Category 2 conditions, with structural design by a registered structural engineer addressing both the long-span hangar structure and the residential footing system

• Native and drought-tolerant landscaping, framing the building within its bushland setting

Why It Works

The success of this project lies in treating the hangar not as a shed bolted onto a house, but as a legitimate, equal half of the building — same materials, same detailing, same architectural intent. For clients whose lifestyle genuinely revolves around aviation, that distinction matters: the hangar isn't hidden out the back, it's the view from the kitchen window.

It's a model that translates well beyond aviation, too — the same approach applies to acreage clients wanting a workshop, machinery shed, or studio integrated into (rather than separated from) their home.

Services Provided

Quorum Studios provided architectural design and documentation services through to Building Approval stage, including sketch design, design development, body corporate assessment, and construction documentation, with coordination across structural engineering, shed fabrication, and certification consultants.

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