FARM HOUSE

2011 - 2013

Located in a Heritage Conservation Area outside of Maitland NSW, this vernacular house sits on the fringes of fertile hunter valley agricultural land and the outskirts of a rural village and heritage conservation area.

The nature of the site inspired a conventional arrangement of farm buildings set around a courtyard and the earliest phases of the project explored the possibility of enclosing the house to form a private fortified enclosure, open to the house on all four sides.

The final design raises two single-storey wings of accommodation with active living quarters between on the cleared footprint of the old farm sheds that occupied the site prior.  

Agricultural precedents were explored and interpreted in both the form and materiality of the structure, producing pitched roofs of corrugated zinc, white-lime rendered walls and timber elements left to weather. Full-height raked ceilings fill the interiors with natural light and with views out to the agrarian landscape and inwards across the courtyard.

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Project Team: Prudence Bowe Architect

Town Planner: Plan Ink

Surveyor: Scott Crisp & Dilley

Geotechnical Consultant: CSG Engineers

Heritage Architect: Carste Studio

Structural Engineer: Michael Fitzgerald

Energy Audit: Prudence Bowe NatHERS Assessor

Builder: A & K Mackay Building