I came here on a very windy day and noticed about seven species of local animal that were
attacking anything that could grow, ones that bounce and ones that fly and ones that burrow
and ones that nibble and in a very polite way then I started to imagine how people who were
committed to making a farm and a garden could in fact flourish in such an unlikely place.
I'm Timothy Hill who in a sense has, from start to finish, been the custodian of the design.
Having worked on the site for many years, it's a pleasure on an occasion like this to
acknowledge the traditional owners, the Dja Dja Wurrung people, to acknowledge
their ancestors and their presence which having spent time on their country I'm very mindful of.
We're one and a half hours away from Melbourne, we have risen in height, so our exact site is
called elevated planes, we're on a ridge and I understand that we're above gold mines.
The arrival is scaled so that you arrive in a sense at a very ambiguous hall,
that is not optimised for the car, but then has all the potential
of being ambiguously for as they say weddings, parties, anything.
Off that huge portal we've got the animals on axis in one direction
and the garden and the people, they're on the other side.
After arriving in the big hall one set of doors give on to what in terms of scale and character
is the complete opposite of where you've arrived which is an intimate vestibule,
we move onwards from there and then there's the first offer to travel above
to a building which has its own staircase in the garden,
or there's the temptation to pursue now that you've arrived other buildings around town.
Our research centered on how in other societies at other times, the agricultural model of super
confining the fecund part and therefore being able to leave most of the landscape as it was,
ahead of not only an age of efficiency but also when it comes to the example of Palladio,
a potentially beautiful democracy in the sense that the Palladian Villa had the stores,
the people who looked after the farm, the owners of the estate, the art collection,
the machinery, all in one magnificent building. Palladio built very beautifully so that then I
guess the net rationale is a lot of people had a lot of contact with beauty, a lot of the time.
The concept for this space was really about having something with many layers,
that was multifunctional but it was also a space to hone our skills of
self-sufficiency to exchange knowledge and to run programs where other people could learn.
We also run a WWOOFing program where people come
and live and work with us to help contribute to that farming system.
I'm Ronnen and one of the owners of Daylesford Longhouse
alongside my partner Trace, we've been living up here for about 13 years.
The fundamental principle of establishing a greenhouse cleans up a number of key things,
one is wind protection, the other is a level of amenity all year round and the incredible
thousand square meter reach of roof gives us a massive water harvesting device which
allows us to hold that water and not have the soil dry out really quickly.
The kitchen would have to be my favourite part of the house without question.
There are quite a few aspects that make that kitchen extraordinary,
one is its ability to transform, so the doors roll back, the roof retracts and you
can be cooking almost as if you're outside and it incorporates a multitude of things
in terms of a dining space, as well as a space for running workshops and classes.
The long house continues to unfold, you encounter more gardens,
fruit trees and then private garden space at the back, which sits adjacent to the Airbnb.
The Airbnb itself is quite a compact little space, but it's really beautifully
positioned in terms of its outlook so it greets the Eastern sun in the morning,
we have the benefit of being able to have it at times for ourselves but also being able to have
an active social lifestyle that's centred around the house means that we're also fairly permeable.
Incredibly, people seem to leave here somewhat changed, whether it be through
that sense of wonderment and delight, or having experienced something different,
or that connection with nature and the ability to kind of decompress.
It doesn't have one big idea, it has a collection of small aggregate ones.
The ventilation system of the Garden Room is controlled by easily moved but massive
sliding screens that have a draft characteristic that's used in the agricultural industry.
Each skin makes its own contribution so some of them are not air porous, but are
water porous. On occasion we've used a product that is light diffusing and also intuitive.
To be specifically asked what I'm most proud of, it's so easy to answer because it's other
people's efforts. This is one of the most marvellous things the builder has ever built.
I'm fairly confident it's well beyond what the clients had imagined and so
I'm so proud that the clients then, because it's so important to them, have pursued it.