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Issue Nº01 · MMXXVI · Afternoon Light
Issue Nº01 Vol. I · MMXXVI
Byron Bay 28° 38′ S, 153° 36′ E
Edition Afternoon Light

Albe*

A press practice based in Byron Bay. Quiet noise, well made.

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No. 01 — Masthead
Albe* is a press practice based in Byron Bay. We work with a small list of founders and houses we know personally — surf, hospitality, fashion, marine — in Australia and Bali. Our founding work begins with Hotel Komune at Keramas, the Ela Elu atelier in Currumbin, Houston Currumbin, and the Pandana project on South Stradbroke Island, with new pieces in production for Villa Zyloh, Suku, Ulu Cliffhouse, and The Yacht Club Indonesia. A short list, kept short on purpose.

In this issue

What we make a habit of. A short list, kept honest — we do these things, not other things.

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Featured Piece · Nº II · The Long Read For Vogue Living · Currumbin, QLD

The house that Seidler walked away from

On a quiet stretch of the Gold Coast, a developer's curlicued balustrades drove a young architect to refuse his own building. Seventy years later, the woman who saved it from the bulldozer chose not to undo a single one of them.

Subject Houston Currumbin · Q1 MMXXVII Words Albe* Editorial Visualisation MILAH Studio Length 1,950 words
The facade of Houston Currumbin at 796 Pacific Parade, white render, modernist arches, with the new top-floor addition above.
Plate I 796 Pacific Parade, post-restoration. The new top-floor addition rests on an independent concrete frame engineered by Richard Erwin. Render · MILAH Studio

This house was designed, the story goes, by Harry Seidler. Not the Seidler of Australia Square or the MLC Centre or Blues Point Tower or any of the buildings that turned a Vienna-born modernist into the great architectural provocateur of postwar Australia, but the young Seidler. The Seidler in his thirties, recently returned from working in the offices of Marcel Breuer in New York and Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil, building a practice in Sydney and accepting the occasional commission outside it.

Currumbin in 1958 or thereabouts was not yet the Gold Coast that the rest of Australia knows. It was a fishing village with a pandanus-lined beach and a few weatherboard cottages, set behind a headland against which one of the cleanest right-hand point breaks in the country wraps and wraps. Whoever the developer was — history is patchy on the detail — had ambitions to build something for the modern age, and he hired the right architect for it.

And then, the lore continues, he ignored him. The developer wanted the balustrades. Seidler did not. Seidler, by every account of the man written in the sixty years since, was incapable of being ignored on aesthetic matters. The story passed down in the Currumbin community is that he refused to allow his name to be attached to the completed building. He walked. And the building got built anyway, by someone else, balustrades and all.

Whether the story is true in every particular is, in a way, beside the point. What is true is what you can see.

The building is unmistakably of its period. The horizontal proportions, the cantilever, the unornamented planarity, the white planar walls. The whole thing, but for those two curlicued iron balustrades, looks as if it has been drawn with a single confident horizontal line.

Seventy years on, the house at 796 Pacific Parade is rising again. Not as something else; as itself. Alana McBain, who held planning approval for a five-storey demolition and rebuild, decided to build one storey instead — a new top-floor penthouse threaded onto the original through an independent concrete frame engineered by Richard Erwin that bears no load on the 1958 fabric below. The original building remains. The balustrades remain. The architect, presumably, would still walk away.

Inside, the interiors are by Milah Laidley, who is, in the way these stories sometimes resolve, the McBain–Cannon daughter. Her paintings — sold elsewhere under the single name MILAH — hang on the walls she has dressed. Three apartments below, a penthouse above, four keys in all. The ground floor stays with Ela Elu, the bridal atelier Alana founded and still runs, where her sister Narelle works the front-of-house and where, on a Saturday in 1958, the developer who didn't listen to Harry Seidler might once have walked past on his way down to the surf.

The penthouse master suite at Houston Currumbin, with an arched window facing the Pacific at sunset, sheer curtains, and pampas grass in a clay vessel.
Plate II The penthouse master suite, west-facing. Interior · Milah Laidley
The penthouse ensuite at last light, twin basins in stone, a freestanding tub framed by an arched opening to the surf, with a MILAH painting on the right-hand wall.
Plate III The ensuite at last light. Painting on the right by MILAH. Interior · Milah Laidley
Houston Currumbin · 796 Pacific Parade · Opening Q1 MMXXVII Request the full piece →

On the roster

Founding work & pieces
in production
№ 001
Villa · Bali

Villa Zyloh

A private villa on Bali's coast, made for considered stays. Currently in production for a long-form piece on the property and the way it lives.

In production
№ 002
Resort · Bali

Hotel Komune

A 66-room surf and wellness resort at Keramas, on Bali's east coast. Opened 2012. Fourteen years of continuous press coverage across travel, surf and championship titles.

Open · 2012
№ 003
Beach Club · Uluwatu

Ulu Cliffhouse

The clifftop beach club at Uluwatu, run by Josh Forrow. A piece is in production on the house, the membership, and the long view down the cliff.

In production
№ 005
Yacht Charter · Indonesia

The Yacht Club Indonesia

Justin Werner's luxury charter operation, working out of Bali across Komodo and Raja Ampat. MY Samkara and the wider fleet. A piece is in production on the operation and the cruising arc.

In production
№ 006
Boutique · Currumbin

Houston Currumbin

A four-key boutique on Pacific Parade, restored rather than demolished. Currently in placement for a long-form feature with Vogue Living.

Opening · Q1 2027
№ 007
Hospitality · Bali

Suku

A Bali hospitality group with a particular eye for design and the quiet end of the trade. A long-form piece is in production on the founders and the way the rooms are made.

In production
№ 008
Resort & Marina · SSI

Pandana Resort & Marina

An eco-resort with a marina on South Stradbroke Island, under a 100-year Crown lease. The kind of project measured in decades.

In development

Selected work

Press placed across Tony Cannon's portfolio since 2003 — from the Bale resorts of the mid-2000s through to Hotel Komune today. Each entry runs in the publication shown; bylines are the writer's, links go to the live piece.

A complete portfolio document is available on request — thirty-nine pages spanning 2003 to 2026, every entry sourced with a live URL, every byline named where credited.

No. III — Philosophy

We work with fewer houses, more closely. A short roster, a long relationship, and a habit of answering the phone.

Albe* is a small house by design. The roster is short and stays short — eight subjects at any one time, no more — and we work with each closely. The founders and houses we represent are people we know, mostly personally, working in fields we know — hospitality, surf, fashion, marine. We are not pitching for new business. The list grows when a piece in production becomes a piece in placement, and when an editor we trust says yes.

The work is editorial first. We think about what a piece of press will read like in three years, not what it will look like in three days. We write longer briefs than most. We send shorter pitches than most. We commission rather than represent, and the writer's byline always carries the relationship to the editor.

The thirty-year operating history behind the practice is Tony Cannon's. The twenty-three years of placed coverage — beginning with the Bale resorts in the mid-2000s and continuing through Hotel Komune today — is the work that produced this practice. Albe* is the name we have now put on it.

Let's talk*

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press@albe.press
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© MMXXVI Albe* Pty Ltd Made on Bundjalung Country Set in Fraunces & Bricolage Grotesque