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About 25 kilometres from Melbourne, Warrandyte is famous for its bushy blocks and understated architecture, featuring notable mid-century modern houses and rustic properties.
And despite being a new build in the suburb, Warrandyte House by Figureground Architecture fits right into this unique context.
The family home belongs to a landscaper, his wife, and their three teenage children, who’ve owned the five-acre hobby farm for more than a decade.
The new residence comes after years of living in a dysfunctional and dark 1980s brick veneer house. It was dark, with low ceilings and a deep verandah on all sides, which did a disservice to the beautiful property, where resident sheep and llamas roam, with views of the Yarra Valley in the background.
‘The clients wanted a home with craft and refinement, but also robust enough to deal with the messiness of a family of five living on a small farm,’ Figureground Architecture director Matt Rawlins says.
‘The open woodland landscape with sloping hills and distant valley views was our starting point for this project.
‘We wanted to design a house that responded to this unique, topographical and picturesque landscape, but also could sit comfortably and contextually amongst the nearby utilitarian farm sheds.’
This ethos inspired Matt to create the house as a modern interpretation of the typical farmhouse, featuring a simple skillion roof, bricks, and sheet metal cladding as a homage to the rural vernacular.
Perched on top of a steep escarpment, the building is deliberately nestled along the site’s existing contours.
Earthy brown bricks anchor it into the ground as the sloping roof reflects the fall of the land, while the internal steps and terraced decks subtly lead from the entry at the top of the ridge down through to the pool and outdoor areas. Around the perimeter, soft, textural grasses help further immerse the building into its setting.
The highly functional floor plan is broken out by a series of practical pavilions. One contains a separate mudroom and the garage. Inside, the hallway opens to a wing of bedrooms and a rumpus room reserved for the owners’ children. This zone is separated from the living areas by a ‘central service core’ (containing the study, bathrooms, a storeroom, and kitchen), offering a sense of privacy for the teenagers.
The interiors were designed to be deliberately pared back, to celebrate the surrounding natural beauty. In the living spaces, the warmth of the timber floors and joinery are offset by the dark raked ceiling.
‘We convinced the clients to paint the ceiling in this area a dark charcoal, which challenged them a little at first,’ Matt says.
‘The result is that when you enter the living spaces, the ceiling seems to disappear, and you are immediately drawn to the east-facing wall of deep, timber-revealed picture windows which seem to distil and amplify the outside landscape in a mesmerising way.’
And mesmerising is the perfect descriptor for the home itself!
