Mornington Peninsula, Victoria AUS

Completion: 2004

Taking advantage of its steeply sloped location, this house has been carefully sited to make full use of broad panoramas across Westernport Bay to Phillip Island. It fully integrates itself into the site by weaving its way amongst the significant existing trees including a large Oak at the entry and a copse of Banksias to the south. Tapping into the rich history of the ‘Mornington Peninsula Style’ prevalent in the area during the 1950’s-1970’s the house is clad in ship-lapped timber boards and provides 4 bedrooms split over two levels.

The Westernport House is a leap into the uncertainty of action without deliberated meaning, mainly of space and scale – two components of architecture that are sort of unphotograph-able. We began with the proposition of formlessness and yet could not shake off the figurative House. Familiar glimpses seem everywhere. Dreaming of the sanctuary of childhood holidays, those most artificial of memories, we tried to make a weekender that had the informality of pragmatism and yet also carried a lot of architecture, like a sampler, but made without graphics and without patchiness.

The dream of every designer in the digital labyrinth of memories is the fusion of bits that retain recognised parts but is holistically new. Surprisingly, the form is made with a start and a finish (its interior is fluid and directional, but not abstract), and a front and a back (although which is which is forever contradicted by subjugation to the prospect). It is a black house, but wooden inside.