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It's such a rugged landscape,
it's rolling hills and at the end of the site, expansive views out to ocean.
So the journey to the house itself is quite special, the intimacy was really important
because of the weather. To be able to have sort of cozy spaces that feel protected you
can retreat to and really bunker down in and and watch the weather come through.
I'm Lucy Cuthbertson, I'm an associate at Carr and I was the project architect on Peninsula House.
My name is Sue Carr and my role in the project working with Chris McHugh and Lucy Cuthbertson,
the team on on the project was to develop the big idea as a result of the client brief.
Peninsula house is located at Flinders which is located on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, we're
in a rural agricultural farmland area but part of our site opens up directly onto the Bass Strait.
So the brief from our clients had two really key elements the first being somewhere they
could house their amazing art collection and celebrate that, and the second being a
house that could accommodate our two clients and feel cozy when they're here together but
then could expand when they've got guests and family coming to visit.
We worked with wind consultants when we were first looking to site the building looking to
find prevailing winds and where we might find protected space on the site, and wind reports
came back basically there's wind coming from everywhere so that really helped us know that we
wanted to settle the house into the landscape to create as much protection as possible,
and create strategic outdoor areas that we knew would be protected from the elements.
The idea from the entry was to create an undulating carriageway if you like,
to arrive at a beautiful courtyard that was quite pristine and mysterious.
The northern arrival was then the idea of the experience of
entering the property internally and capturing immediately, the amazing view.
Second experience was the art gallery, you entered from the gallery as a public entry
but the private entry was on the southern spine, so the client and the family can
move through the spaces without actually entering the public gallery so there's
kind of a dual access on the property and two elevations that are equally important.
The house floor plan was really about the celebration of expansion of spaces and
then compression, we can shut down zones and open them up as needed.
When we were designing the plan really brought to life the idea of the central
spine down the building and that central spine is the gallery for the artworks,
but it's also the more formal axis for for people to use, but the planning allowed us
to create the glazed facade to be the more intimate circulation and when it's
just our two clients in residence that's the circulation path that they will use.
So that is been quite a special part of the building and makes
it feel very homely but still a building of scale.
We've allowed the building to open and close through the use of extensive pocket
doors throughout the building, all beautifully detailed with lovely hardware which has the very
simplified palette that we've used across the whole building but have a lovely touch to them.
The materiality of the building needed to deal with external forces,
we worked very hard to find something that had a rural feel, rather than a city feel.
It talks to a contemporary reinterpretation of the farmhouse in its scale, but its materiality as
well, the metal roof is a reinterpretation of the more traditional gabled farmhouse turned upwards,
there's a lot of hard materiality which reflects the landscape that we're sitting in but it's warm
and it's tonal, it's a subdued background which influences the calmness of the house.
Coming back here after a few years, it's been wonderful to see the materials aging
in the way that we hoped that they would, the timber out in the courtyard
has silvered which really is tying back into the render that we were sitting it against,
so seeing that progression has been very special.
The way the house feels, changes from morning,
noon to night, depending on what season it is in what time of the year and the
house is here to absorb all of that and feel it, that's the point of it.
It's an ever changing landscape, and always you get the best outcome when
there's a combination of an amazing client that understands design and a
builder that was passionate about what he was building.
It was an aspirational project.
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