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It's quite an exciting feeling as you cross the
cattle grids and start to wind down and drop down into the landscape.
When you come for the first time it's really quite memorable.
I'm Andy Carson director of Atelier Andy Carson and I'm the architect for Dovecote.
The project is situated in Gerringong which is down the South Coast,
this area of the South Coast is famous for these big green rolling hills that
connect down to the coast, there's various villages dotted around.
The brief was pretty detailed in terms of the schedule of
accommodation of what rooms and areas that the clients wanted.
In terms of style, the brief for the main house was always meant to be quite modern
and contemporary but the brief for The Range was always meant to be much simpler as a counterpoint.
So The Range is quite close to The Headland and they both share a lot of the same material
palette so it's really important to establish very different identities for each property.
We always wanted the focus to really be on The Headland
as the main showpiece and we kind of thought of The Range as being viewed
as like a little farm shed that yeah maybe you don't realise it's a house.
When it came to the material selections for both projects we started mainly with
choosing materials that have great longevity because it is
such an exposed side we do have salt spray from breaking waves nearby.
Dark metal cladding was chosen just so that the properties recede into the landscape didn't want
something too stark or noticeable and we chose copper for the shutters just
to celebrate that golden light and also just to watch it slowly change colour and patina.
So the inspiration for The Headland really came from just reacting to the site,
straight away we had the obvious I guess you could say problem or more opportunity of dealing
with these vast views in every direction and we really wanted to strongly connect to the
farmland and just not be too disconnected so we took a very minimalist approach.
So as we approach the front of The Headland, we're more or less funnelled towards the
front door with these angled walls and then once inside you're in what I call the bedroom pavilion
at the end of the bedroom hallway we're presented with this glass link and then we
enter through finally into the living lounge area.
To the right we have these amazing telescopic
views looking down along the coast and Werri Beach.
The courtyard in the centre of the headland was initially created to make a protective space but
it's also very much the heart of the house and a social space so we wanted to link different areas
like the fire pit or the pool, those really social places where people are going to move between.
When we're approaching views we didn't want to just have wall-to-wall glass in every direction,
we really wanted to cut it up into very specific views, that way we thought the
view wouldn't become boring you'd constantly be noticing little things change in the background
like cows moving across the landscape or waves breaking maybe whale jumping out of the ocean,
just constantly reminding you and connecting you to what's going on in the day.
The inspiration for The Range was really just trying to create a very simple counterpoint
to The Headland and just doing our take on that sort of simple Australian shed,
so as we approach the building we're presented with a long blank wall that kind of screens
away the beach and the other views so that we can then reintroduce those views in a controlled way.
So at the end of the path, we step onto a deck which we call the North Deck,
the building does that classic thing with the elongated plan facing north to be able to control
passive solar light but we really didn't want to ignore the Illawarra escarpment and the views to
the farmland out to the west, so we chose to open up the western gable end of the house
so one of the things we wanted to celebrate was that view west but it creates the obvious
challenge of having to control the heat from that western light so we came up with the idea of these
large copper louvres that are able to sort of control views and light throughout the day.
This house also celebrates structure so we have these steel portal frames that
move through the building and divide the house into four specific bays.
We also have like a small plunge pool where you can sit immersed in the landscape and
still feel part of the farm but also have those beautiful ocean views.
The conditions we had to deal with here were still very much about protection so that was
the idea of the North and the South decks so you could kind of move between each side of
the building and use the building itself as a windbreak or to be able to get protection.
So the character in The Range is very much a moody intimacy,
better down into the landscape looking out, we don't have such expansive glass in the
living area and the suspended fireplace really plays into that sense of intimacy.
At The Range my favourite part is really just sitting in the lounge room and just
watching the sunset and when I think about these properties what I'm most proud of is
really how much it connects with people and it still seems to be relevant and exciting.
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