14 Cannon Shack.
DUNSBOROUGH FAMILY HOME
14 Cannon Shack is an architect-designed Dunsborough family home in Western Australia, built for a down-to-earth family starting a new life in the South West. Set on a large rural lot, it looks out over a nearby creek and a stand of native forest.
This isn’t a holiday rental. It’s a real family home, designed for everyday living, fitness, entertaining, big views, quiet moments, and a very good orange foamy at the end of the day.
Rural outlook. Family grit. A proper South West home.
PROJECT SNAPSHOT.
Project: 14 Cannon Shack.
Location: Dunsborough, Western Australia.
Region: Margaret River Region / South West WA.
Design system: MIDS — Modular Integrated Design System by mi shack®.
Home type: Architect-designed Dunsborough family home.
Use: Primary family home.
Setting: Large rural South West lot overlooking a nearby creek and native forest.
Completed: May 2023.
Build time: 14 months.
Indoors: 358 sqm.
Outdoors: 238 sqm.
Sleeping zones: 5.
Bathrooms: 2.
Design idea: A generous rural Dunsborough family home shaped around everyday living, fitness, entertaining, comfort, views and a new South West lifestyle.
Why it matters: Proof that MIDS scales into a large primary family home without losing personality or site connection.
“IT LIFTS US.”
Cannon Shack is a completed, lived-in family home — built over 14 months and finished in May 2023. The best measure of how it turned out comes from owner Nathan Cannon:
Architecture, at its best, doesn’t just shelter us — it lifts us. Thankyou Marcus for our beautiful home!
That’s the measure that matters. The home doesn’t just provide shelter — it lifts the people who live there.
THE SITE.
Cannon sits on a large rural lot in Dunsborough, with a strong South West feeling and views toward a nearby creek and a beautiful stand of native forest. A setting like that asks the home to feel open, grounded and connected to the landscape — but a family home can’t run on views alone.
It still has to work hard every day: clear planning, useful spaces, durable materials and a calm relationship to the site. The design pulls those together into a generous base for the family’s new life down south.
THE BRIEF.
The brief was personal and direct. The owners had moved from a farm in the Midwest of WA to start a new chapter in Dunsborough, so the home had to carry a real lifestyle shift — space for family, space to gather, space to train, and space to enjoy the view — while feeling warm, strong and relaxed.
The goal was never a showpiece. It was a proper Dunsborough family home: generous, but not fussy; robust, but still warm; architectural, but down-to-earth.
THE DESIGN RESPONSE.
The design response is bold, grounded and practical. Cannon starts from the MIDS system, which organises the home into clear zones — living, sleeping, bathing, training, entertaining and outdoor. (Modular here doesn’t mean prefab or factory-built; for mi shack®, modular means clear, predefined zones and elements that adapt to the site, the brief and the budget.)
On this project, the system was scaled up for a large rural family home — generous internal spaces, deep outdoor areas and practical everyday connections, wrapped in a material palette that gives the house real architectural character. The result is confident without being precious.
MATERIAL CHARACTER.
Cannon has a strong material identity: metal cladding, rammed earth, charred timber, burnished concrete, double glazing and warm timber detailing. None of it is decoration for its own sake — it makes the house feel grounded, textured and durable, and it suits the rural South West setting.
Rather than being polished to death, the home reads as strong, warm and practical. For this family, that’s exactly the right fit — robust without being cold, architectural without losing its down-to-earth quality.
EVERYDAY LIVING.
A good family home has to do more than look good — it has to work every day. Cannon supports exercise, cooking, entertaining, resting, family routines and quiet time looking out over the landscape. There’s space to train, space to gather and space to retreat.
That gives the house a useful rhythm: it handles busy family life, but it can also slow right down. That balance is what makes the home feel lived in, not staged.
DUNSBOROUGH CONTEXT.
Dunsborough sits in one of WA’s best-known coastal regions — close to Geographe Bay, beaches, bushland, wineries and the wider Margaret River Region. For a
