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Surround the ruins This substantial yet elegant home in Victoria’s Central Highlands inherits the site’s past homes, lost to fire, creating a lasting legacy for a multi-generational family.
The term tabula rasa, like many sayings in ancient languages, has evolved over time. The expression originally described a writing board being wiped clean, but now often conjures up images of emptiness or new beginnings. The English philosopher John Locke popularized the term in his work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where his purpose was primarily to describe something other than emptiness: rather, a blank sheet of paper is a symbol of the starting point of human understanding, where experience is Made on a piece of paper. Document and develop understanding. For Moloney Architects, this idyllic setting 20 minutes outside Ballarat presented a conundrum: an apparently “empty” site that belied its rich history.
The more than 150-year-old estate has been razed twice by bushfires, both times exposing its rather beautiful and largely intact underground wine cellars. Moloney Architects were commissioned to design the third house. However, while the site on the ground had been effectively cleared, the idea of starting with a clean slate was immediately complicated by the weight of the site’s history. As with Locke’s white paper, the absence itself was the beginning of a new chapter in the project.
While exploring all options for the client, the architects actually did look into filling in the remaining underground ruins, relegating the previous residence to a distant memory. They also explored, as recent houses have done, building directly on ruins, making use of cellars and somehow restarting history. Thankfully, the architect convinced the client that there was a third option, proposing a celebration of the ruins, honoring their history by wrapping new homes around them. Practice director Mick Moloney cites a love of Venice and the artful weaving of contemporary architecture with its historic fabric as inspiration; however, it was during a visit to Sydney’s Paddington Reservoir Gardens and a visit to the derelict It was only after the water plant that the client developed an appreciation for this approach and finally decided on the direction.
Covering 2,500 acres of farmland, the development dates back to the 1800s, when the farm was a town in its own right, supporting a community through a dairy farm, two gatehouses, a schoolhouse and impressive stables. The first two houses are situated on an axis with the imposing architecture of these stables, creating a commanding connection between the two and reflecting the original owners’ involvement in the horse racing business. For Moloney Architects, this axiality reflected the history of the previous house and was incorporated but not repeated. Instead, the new residence covers its own subtly rotating grid as it wraps around the ruins, improving the orientation of the landscaped gardens on the other side of the house. However, we made a concession to the original axis, with a poetically angled bay window jutting out from the main corridor and neatly aligned with the aforementioned stables – a small but perfect nod to the history of the site pay tribute.
Mick said the brief had been developed and interrogated throughout the project, firstly to create purpose-built accommodation for the client and the changing numbers of visiting descendants, and secondly to leave a lasting legacy commensurate with its prominence and scale for future generations . manor. Previous proposals for the project had reached to the sky, and Moloney Architects chose to arrange the vast project into three highly level, low-lying pavilions connected by covered walkways surrounding the ruins. Leveling would be a key driver, and Mick recalls that the client’s favorite view from the previous house was across the valley, looking at livestock silhouetted against a perfectly level ridge. This observation effectively drove the arrangement of this side of the building, which is conceived as a series of monumental-scale picture frames, externally connected by generous terraces and capturing this view.
The largest pavilion is located in the center and contains the main kitchen and living area as well as bedrooms and an impressive timber-framed library. The second pavilion houses the client’s family; serving as a wing to the main pavilion, it is connected by a covered open-air area but is actually a separate residence. The third pavilion is a games and entertainment room with an in-ground swimming pool next to it, no doubt the grandchildren have built their own pool.
Each pavilion is made from a beautiful and sophisticated combination of maw panels and limestone blocks, chosen not only because they look great together, but also to protect against future bushfires; the placement of the limestone blocks has been carefully planned to to obscure previously known fire paths. The interior of the pavilion is finished in a suite of materials that reflect the juxtaposition of a refined architectural residence and a working farmstead. Timber walls and slatted ceilings subtly break up the large living areas, creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere, while polished concrete floors and solid details elsewhere will withstand the rigors of everyday farm life.
Like the proverbial phoenix, this project incredibly sees a home reborn from the ashes for the third time: rather than building from scratch on a blank slate, the architects drew on the remnants of the past to build their design approach, creating A house worthy of its great history.
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