Richmond Home / TERROIR

Text description provided by the architects. Richmond House is a three-bedroom home with artist studio. The design came out of a conversation with the client who appreciated the spectacular views from this site but specifically did not want a simplified endless sweeping view. There was an opportunity to direct and frame views from specific rooms.

The plan is organised around three distinct portals on the north-facing site; the studio looks out to the Tea Tree Valley; the living room The Coal Valley; and the kitchen directed to the Richmond village. Private spaces nestle into the hill of the site behind, where the plan is bent to follow contours, bringing these rooms into proximity with the casuarinas. The interior has a faceted white ceiling that rises and falls as you move through the house, recalling the hills beyond when covered in the low soft mist that regularly flows through the valley.

The form of this house, as with so many TERROIR projects, arrived at the end of the design process and as an after-effect of decisions made with the client about how they wanted to occupy the site and what they wanted to see from it. These relations – both distant views across the valley and close encounters with vegetation on site – resulted in a star-shaped plan that enabled programs to be arranged directly in response to these views.