Name: This Home Was Inspired by the Spirit of Camping in the Australian Landscape
Uploaded: 2025-05-26T09:14:10.000Z
Duration: 9 min 1 s
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The premise of the whole thing was very much about being in the landscape and it wasn't about what the building would look like.

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Was really about how do we experience this in the landscape, what's the experience of being in the house, and then what it looked like really just unfolded as part of that story.

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We're in the sort of back of Ocean Grove, where it's predominantly bellarine, yellow gums, myoporum landscape.

The site is part of a whole new subdivision of quite large sites, but particularly this site was chosen because of the vistas to the reserve that wraps around it.

The brief was single level, one that they could age in place.

He wanted to keep it a fairly simple, small sort of building and quite compact.

The story for them that I picked up on was that they're big campers and they're outdoor people.

So when we were looking at the layout and it was initially going to be this really simple form, I started to come up with the idea of well maybe the kitchen, dining and living are the collective sort of camping platform.

And then there are the various pods, so the kids are in one tent, the parents are in another tent, there's a swag by the fireplace, and then there was the camp kitchen.

And then just picking up on that sort of idea of a vernacular that sits in the landscape that's almost a bit sort of 70s retrospective kind of idea.

You really arrive in this house down on the ground plane and then elevate up onto the stairs to a really simple sort of entry.

There's not a great amount of formality as you walk in and then you step into the main house.

And then as you come into the kitchen, having turned you back to the view, you then turn around and you have that bigger view through the dining room, both to the South Reserve and the North.

And then also this glimpse that you get with this corner window in the kitchen looking out to the North West across to the fields beyond.

There were sort of aspects that we really tried to enhance a very practical kitchen.

So stainless steel was definitely on the agenda and then the idea of everyone gathering around a small island bench.

And then there's the big joinery unit as you come through that's sort of almost in the corridor but as part of the kitchen.

And that was really important in terms of cooking and pantry storage, etc.

There's other qualities like the living space and the dining space include big day bed bench areas so you can lie and recline, children can play, looking out to the views all the time and feeling that constant connection to landscape.

In some of those locations we really expanded the windows so that you felt like you were almost outside.

It's all painted in a very muted colour and we've got lots of plywood and timber veneer so that it was just definitely come in here and feel that sense of refuge and quiet.

The timber and plywoods were something that were obviously going to provide a lot of warmth and they're quite practical and very durable and with a nearly two-year-old grandson, running around, that's a pretty good thing to have.

And certainly choosing timbers that have some texture and life in them themselves that they've actually got their own story to tell.

The bedroom space is quite contained but you step out of that sort of main shared space into the bedrooms.

And there's the suite of two bedrooms for family and guests and then there's the suite of bedroom and study for the parents themselves where it's just quiet, peace, it's not necessarily about any sort of grandeur.

The bathrooms were also something that we were really keen to sort of make sure they stayed connected to landscape.

The bathroom that they have, for instance, has that idea of sitting in the bath and actually looking straight out to the landscape.

So the window wraps around the corner so that once you're immersed that's what all you see is just landscape beyond.

And it was that idea of almost being in a sort of grotto so we used the darker sort of wet looking tiles to bring that quality out.

And then there's just really practical things like the laundry is a very practical space that accommodates the storage really well but doesn't miss that opportunity of sort of having a glimpse out through to the landscape.

So it was always about sort of these spaces having their own little views.

Essentially, because the building is elevated above the landscape so it's lightweight, it sort of meant that in terms of choosing materials, we were down to sort of lightweight materials.

It really was that idea of a simple house again about receding into the landscape.

Timber was talked about but it's quite an expensive material to use.

So cement sheet sort of seemed the obvious conclusion.

And then the idea was to give that cement sheet some texture and life and use timber battens to cover the joins.

The materials were very practical, very robust.

They had to deal with bushfire as well so that's the other thing that starts to limit you to a degree.

Using, I suppose, that 70s, you know, which I know is currently a sort of trend or had been, a little bit of that 70s low-key, this is about a building in the landscape.

So we were looking at very simple materials.

This client in particular has always been keen on sustainability and it was really he was the driver.

He sort of read more and wanted to see the benefits of this idea of a house that is incredibly low in its energy consumption and didn't need the hydronic heating and cooling etc but really could just operate in itself.

There's a certain degree of insulation in Passive House that's above and beyond what we would typically do.

So we had to increase the thickness of the walls, for instance.

One of the other main aspects of it was that there is a heat recovery system.

It takes some of the air out of the space and uses that to heat the fresh air and then puts the fresh air back in.

So it's a sort of completely sealed system and the other is that you seal the building incredibly well.

So you have to seal it externally but then you seal it internally as well.

So you're sort of wrapping it both internally and externally and that became a bit of a Every time we turned a corner we had to look at how we were going to put the wrap through there and tape it through the timber frames etc and there were some just tricky details there.

And I guess the other thing was it did shift some of those relationships that we had with windows.

But it does mean that you come into this house and it's temperate pretty much most of the year.

And you can still open it up, you can still have windows open, you can shut it down and close it as you like.

The client did put in a wood heater which to many Passive House people would be an absolute don't go there.

But she was really adamant that she wanted that.

That that was I suppose related back to camping but also just something that she really enjoyed was that sense of cosiness.

Sometimes I get phone calls from the client saying they're sitting on their day bed having a cup of tea or occasionally I'll get another one saying I'm standing in the kitchen looking out to the view and the sun setting.

And that's really lovely to hear that they're enjoying the house fully immersed in the landscape.

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This Home Was Inspired by the Spirit of Camping in the Australian Landscape

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