Red Hill Farm – Victoria

The brief was the creation of a home celebrating the surrounding architectural buildings of Red Hill Victoria, but with a modern, contemporary interpretation. A structure with rural character but with an appropriateness to function embedded deep in its design. A close connection between the house, pool, courtyard and the rural landscape is ever prevalent as horses and cattle wander unexpectedly into close view peering inquisitively through framed floor to ceiling windows at the family activity inside.
Designed by Carr in collaboration with Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, the low long farm buildings and barns is prevalent throughout the Mornington Peninsula wine region. However in a departure from these structures, The Red Hill Farm House reveals itself in the roof line, appearing to fold and crease, bend and pleat it celebrates the surrounding landscape of ridges and crests, ranges and rugged elevations.
From a distance and on approach, the three wooden buildings appear as a solid form however as the driveway winds along a tree lined ridge the more refined detailing reveals itself.
Three elongated blackened timber pavilions form a U shape identifying strongly with the site narrative and staggered typography and alluding to notions of a working yard or arena. Corridors encompass the external courtyard, punctuated at ends by large openings providing a direct connection to the surrounding landscape.
Purposefully intimate and enclosed to juxtapose the expansive nature of the site, it appears sunken and private, almost hiding from nature and activity of the farm life. Materiality celebrates the barn narrative but with a refinement and distillation. Rough sawn black timber shrouds the external façade. Natural and sustainable, this blackened materiality immediately references the rural character and forms the basis of the key construction material.