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

To provide their 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.

To be in 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 property is 120,000m2 – with the dwelling that includes five bedrooms, three bathrooms, cellar and bar under south terrace green roof or the ‘mancave/bunker retreat’, living, gym/sauna, carport, garage with shed and farm storage outbuildings. The project commenced in 2020 with a meeting with the client on site to discuss how they would occupy the site as a geographical centre for their life. Mies Van Der Rohe Brick Country House along with his Barcelona Pavilion was a conceptual reference to respond to the site and brief. These projects use wall planes stretched out into the landscape to conceptualise various spaces depending on the axial points and position of the person in reference to the wall plane. Van Der Rohe quote about Brick Country House ‘Nature has been rendered as a sheer plane. The effect is orderly, serene, even breathtaking—and solitary and chilling.’ De Stijl paintings – with their decentralised composition, and the field condition established from the line or in this buildings instance the wall plane created and defining 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. We were interested in how the deep eave line around the building would shape the 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 rural hinterland.

The structure is the architecture, the section in plan and elevation define and cultivate the experience.

Australian Architecture –We always refer to the principles of Critical Regionalism – Kenneth Frampton to guide the design process – culture and civilisation, avoiding the temptation of the avant-garde and universal culture, priopritising regionalism, the tactile and the visual, the architectonic/techtonic response over decorative or representational elements (scenographic), the natural vs artificial and most importantly topography, context, climate, light and tectonic form as the over arching foundations to establish the architectural response. The site was to be occupied as a place for connection, rest and family life but also as 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 and Melbourne to the North and Bass Strait to the South. So conceptually the house 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. This also allows for different parts of the site to be shelters from the elongated building form blocking various seasonal winds.

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. In plan of the house is elongated in four directions across the site to anchor into different site conditions. The building is oriented slightly north - east to create a protected northern terrace looking out to the You Yang mountains and rural landscape. The living opens out with a green roof terrace for summer time with a den space below hunkered into the sloping western topography for winter and evening use. Solid spine walls span between separate volumes of the house to define seasonal areas to occupy depending on the winds, sun and temperature. In Section a deep eave wraps the perimeter of the building allowing shelter and protection from sun. The living has an extended roof line lifting to the north to capture the sky’s weather patterns and more light. The architecture and interiors are intentional to shift the noise of the urban world away allowing the clients and their children to breathe, to think, and have emotional clarity. The architecture is to create ease of movement through the building and out into the landscape, to enhance mood with access to seasonal light in all directions including winter azimuth and altitude. There is no decoration but elemental materials -timber, stone, steel and concrete.

Peninsula House