This part of the world is interesting it's got, it has many histories,
we imagine it's deeper indigenous history, it then went through various
stages of dairy farming and other forms of colonial agriculture from this part of
Victoria overlooking a vast expansive coastline that looks to Bass Strait.
Hello I'm John Wardle founding partner of Wardle, a firm of architects responsible
for Best Coast Farm House. Leading into this came the idea of the quintessential
Australian farm house but maybe we could be so reductive in reducing it to three elements only.
A very simple plan, steel roof, timber walls and a single chimney which then led
to probably the second primary strategy, which is the way it sits on the earth.
So you will notice in this film, areas of revegetation surrounding the house a mass
of these little plastic containers to nurture the growth of Indigenous planting in sways that
we sort of imagine work with the topography and our understanding of the landscape as a
protective armature for the house but also as part of the first phase of reworking the landscape over
the entire area of these 300 acres which was at one stage cleared completely as farmland.
It appears upon arrival almost a cartoon-like which is just down to those three elements
which then allows the adventure of the reading of the house to commence.
The single opening of the front door to reveal a mud and boot and coat room is that classic
arrival at a farmhouse, from there you look into and completely in a courtyard which really sits in
trying much of the understanding of being in this house, it is a rectangle surrounded by a passage.
Journey around the house is a sequence of
experience of spaces that are set off this one roof.
The
sweeping zones and their orientation back into the courtyard they are like a series
of separate suites of a double bedroom, an interconnected bathroom and a bunk room.
On the alternate sides of the plan of the two the living zones this one much more about the
functionality of dining, large-scale living in these various parts down this great long chamber
and in the far corners, there's teeny little room which is much more about playing board games and
night time activities hence this internalising of what could have been an external veranda into a
in a court creates some quite unusual spaces in all of the four corners.
Like the idea of tactility somewhere that is drawing you into touch and
feel the edges of the space or the details within space so here thought was winding a
handle that creates electricity that will crank open these massive shutters this
reaching between amazing high technology and then that's a primal desire for being
connected to something and being in control of the operation of an element such as a shutter.
What's interesting is we then walk around as we carve into it with the settings of
the kitchen in this corner, the other living room in that corner, the principal bedroom,
as we open various of the shutters allow pools of light to then come in and change and create
variant areas of illumination within this sort of moody setting that's been created.
We've looked very carefully at the utilisation of materials, particularly natural materials. The
timber that's used internally is either recycled that's in the floor or ply, a veneered plywood.
It is solid timber on the outside but it is spotted gum category 1 Australian eucalyptus.
To us is the most efficient way environmentally of utilising such a timber that really should
stand the test of time, a very singular framework of of materials broken only
by a few moments that the tiles in the kitchens and the bathrooms and the glass in the windows.
To me there's sort of a discipline at work here, the neutral palette
providing few distractions from an appreciation of
the spatial qualities and its outlook into various moments set within the landscape.
The big idea, if there is a big idea,
is that it's a house that expresses the relationship of the floor to terra firma.
The concrete floor goes right along this wing along the other and then back to the point where
floor becomes timber and there's a reason for that, the concrete floor has fallen to earth,
it's followed the alignment of the topography and fallen down through this staircase,
down to the external kitchen and external dining area will sit in concrete and zinc down below.
At that point it seems to have shattered as the roof and the walls continue over
this vast void and fallen to Earth as this one singular little staircase
and these planks of concrete is almost actually been broken as they've fallen
from their place in alignment with the rest of the plan on the natural gradient with a
series of sort of settings for people to sit and socialise on down below.
I think I've had a lot of success over the years have been both curious and enthusiastic,
they're two parts that I think allow us to invite others in
projects like this life-affirming, our practice is a large practice,
we build very big buildings but there's still something that's essentially human about those
more intimate requirements we have for the space that we spend similar to our life within.