Peninsula House is a new family home for a client that decided to move to the Bellarine Peninsula from Melbourne. The objective for the client was to engage in a more regional life for the whole family, to have farm animals, horses, a vineyard, vegetable gardens and to shift to a more holistic life. The clients have quite hectic work lives and the home is to provide for clarity, pose, contemplation and active participation in a more simple bucolic life.

The site is to provide the clients young children connection to landscape and a hands on participation in learning about farming, how to build, self sufficiency, growing your own food and prospering in a regional setting.

The property is in close proximity to the ocean, the bay and the city. The family actively engage in surfing, fishing and many recreational sports so the location of the site was strategic to access surf beaches, rivers, bays and open rural landscapes but also close proximity to the City. The dwelling includes five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a cellar and bar under the south terrace green roof, living, gym/sauna, carport and garage. The site masterplan also includes a shed and farm storage outbuildings.

The project commenced in 2020 with a meeting on site to discuss how they would occupy the site as a geographical centre for their life. In the conceptual phase of developing the design for the dwelling Mies Van Der Rohe's Brick Country House along with the Barcelona Pavilion was considered for reference. These projects use wall planes stretched out into the landscape to delineate various spaces depending on the axial points and position of the person in reference to distinct walls.

‘Nature has been rendered as a sheer plane. The effect is orderly, serene, even breathtaking—and solitary and chilling.’ Van Der Rohe

The Peninsulas House wall plane creates and defines the exterior field condition of the entry yard, the subtracted volumes of garden space, the outdoor northern terrace, the south terrace, north eastern yard for children, lower west terrace for the cellar and bunker retreat.

The roof datum was established to cut through the horizon and shelter the occupants. We were interested in how the deep eave line around the building would shape the overall experience. Something present in many traditional south-east Asian vernacular buildings. The eave line casts your eye down the site and beyond to Port Phillip Bay and the rural hinterland.

The site was to be occupied as a place for connection, rest and family life but also as a geographical center to then travel out to coastlines, rural hinterland, Port Phillip bay and beyond to Melbourne for work - all in different cardinal directions. The house is splayed out in all directions, elevated on the highest point on the site to view Port Phillip Bay to the West, You-Yangs, Melbourne to the North and Bass Strait to the South. As you move through its axis points you can contemplate the next departure to these revered future destinations whilst being grounded in the present landscape. The elongated building form protects various seasonal winds for sheltered locations depending on the time of year.

There is a constant process of subtraction from the linear form to add moments of landscape intervention. Simon Taylor worked with the axial plan and section of the building to compose small but intentional garden spaces that hold close contact with the interiors. The broad intention of the landscape was for an open rural landscape with intimate garden spaces positioned around the ‘subtracted’ volumes of the house bringing an experience of a native Australian garden close but with open views of an untouched grassland rural setting.