Vineyard Residence
This spliced house intimately connects to the idea of viticulture.
With views across the surrounding farmland and set amongst manna gums and stringy barks at the edge of a vineyard, the design of this house explores a dramatic change of life.
Moving away from a busy suburban life onto a working vineyard, the house intimately connects to its context in both design and alignment with the surrounding vines. Forging a relationship between lifestyle and the production of wine, the careful processes of viticulture is used as an analogy to shape the architecture and solid rammed earth walls of the plan form.
Grafting new cultures onto existing rootstock is the horticultural equivalent of this change and adaptation to a new circumstance. Our first move precisely aligns the linear architecture of the vineyard with public and communal spaces of the house.
Extending out from those spaces, massive verandah post structures pick up the rhythm and orientation of the vineyard rows.
Private spaces held in one wing become the cultivar and, following the viticulture analogy, are spliced into the side of the rootstock and then orientated beyond the edge of the vineyard to the valley beyond.
- Traditional Custodians Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation
- Location Tuerong, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
- Project Duration 2001 – 2004
- Procurement Private Commission
- Site Area 24 ha
- Floor Area 440 sqm
- Sustainability 6 Star (Residential)
- Selected Awards
- Harold Desbrowe Annear Award (Residential category), RAIA Victoria 2004
- Best Residential Building, Cityscape Architectural Review, Dubai Awards 2005
- Best Residential Building, Architectural Excellence in the South East Awards 2005
The brief which called for rammed earth has pushed the architect into a fresh engagement with the material, while the house shows an on-going evolution of the firm’s oeuvre: its signature manner and details, fascination with craftspeople, and craft and architecture.
Jury Citation – Harold Desbrowe Annear Award (Residential category)
This rammed-earth dwelling is a triumph of form, mirroring not only function, but also the surrounding vineyard environment.
Helen Kaiser
The walk-through study and ’bus stop’-like boot removal area to the south provide the most unexpected and successful spaces playing with scale and architectural references, and producing an elevation of unexpected composition and clarity.
Jury Citation – Harold Desbrowe Annear Award (Residential category)
The beautiful joint detail of the colonnade not only provokes the imagination but also compels the hand to trace the seam of the joint and through touch to interrogate its existence.
Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper
The two longitudinal elevations contrast in their response to separate visual cues. The north elevation is aligned accurately with the rows of vines and the massive posts that form its verandah structure extend into the vineyard while the inflected shape of the south wall is drawn to frame a view across an adjoining valley.
