This modern farmhouse design is deceptively simple: a long box, floating.
Designed to stand a full storey over a flat site as home to a family on productive flood plains. The Bremer River snakes through the lower end of the site, on its way to Ipswich.
The home then provides cool shaded terraces below, in summer, and sun filled spaces in winter. All rooms are flooded with winter sun, and can see the pool in summer.
The parents eastern retreat welcomes winter morning sun past to the living space. The solid thermal mass core of house connecting to ground and anchoring the temperature of the home through hot summers and cold winters..
The western end of the home is given over to the kids: bedrooms, rumpus, bathrooms and storage. A hill wrapping this western end then connects the home to the ground with the hill created to provide easy access for kids to spill from the house to play through the site – and brings the native landscapes up to shade the western sun from that end of the house.
This level then wraps down past the pool and beyond, with dry creek beds adding beauty and connecting the home to the treed rear of the site. Slowing and allowing stormwater to soak slowly to the ground, to recharge the local water table and water the landscape. A firepit is designed to be integral to life on the site, near to the pool and wrapped by the creek bed, protected by the banks surrounding – to help reduce the risk of lighting fires but hold the fire and family in the space in a natural landscape amphitheatre.
More formal entry access is courtesy of the ramp blade facing the entry of the site to welcome both guests and family on returning home.
Equitable access and sun shading make the detailed landscape design and master planning both integral to the success of the home design: enhancing the natural isolation provided on rural properties, to allow a rich life connected to the surrounds.
However the hill (and others designed on the site) play a further role as animal refuge on a productive farm – when the heat and fires give way to flooding: when the home needs to act as retreat from the more destructive elements beyond heat, cold and busy lives.
Image of our design by Response Image (colour render) and sketched 3d render by ptma Architecture.
