Architecture

Open House Melbourne announced that Tania Davidge has been appointed its new executive director. Davidge is a design advocate, architect, writer, and cofounder of the architectural research practice OoPLA, which delivered Open House Melbourne’s keynote program for 2019, Urban Tactility. In addition, she creates the organisation’s “Making Home” series, which shines a light on the […] More

Robin Boyd’s heritage-listed, midcentury masterpiece, the Boyd Baker House, is for sale.
The modernist house was built between 1964 and 1966 in Long Forest, Bacchus Marsh, on a 35-acre bushland plot. The residence was originally commissioned as a family home for mathematics lecturer Michael Baker, but has most recently been used to host private functions.
Baker graduated from both Eton and Cambridge universities in the UK and decided he would settle in Australia with his wife and four children after accepting a teaching post at the University of Melbourne. His brief to Boyd was for a home that expressed his affection for geometric calculations, leading to a regimented and formal architectural expression.
The house features a square plan, organized around a central courtyard, surrounded by 12 stone cylinders and topped by a shallow pyramid roof. The living spaces, five bedrooms, and four bathrooms are arranged in a symmetrical square around the central courtyard.
The home was made with locally quarried stone for the walls, providing the home a rustic and robust quality that blends seamlessly with its landscape.

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Inside Boyd Baker House. Image:

Cheyne Toomey and Chris Murray for SpaceCraft

The building was added to the Victorian Heritage Register in 2007 and has remained relatively untouched since its construction.
The property holds a collection of dwellings, including the main house, the Dower House also designed by Boyd, and the library designed by Sir Roy Grounds.
The Dower House was commissioned in 1966 as a smaller guest house for the owner’s mother-in-law and was formerly known as the Elizabeth Strickland House. Made from the same locally sourced stone, the smaller house also follows a square plan, but features a freeform stone wall running throughout.
In 1979, the owners commissioned Roy Grounds to design the onsite library to house Dr. Baker’s extensive collection of books, which complements Boyd’s designs through similar material palette while also contrasting their formal style.
The Boyd Baker House is now widely considered one of Australia’s most significant post-war residential buildings and is on the market for private purchase. Buyers will have the option to purchase the home on its own on 19 acres, or with the Dower House and library, together around 30 acres. The properties have been listed with the hopes of totalling between $3.15 million and $3.46 million together, or $1.9–$2.09 million and $1.25–$1.37 million respectively, if purchased separately.
Expressions of interest for the Boyd Baker and Dower houses closes on Thursday 13 April. For more information or to enquire, visit the Jellis Craig website. More

A $250-million mixed-use development, designed by I2C Architects with international practice Ryder Architecture, has been proposed for Oakleigh South in the Melbourne municipality of Monash. To be known as Fieldworks House, the development will the first build-to-rent project in the Cikty of Monash, comprising 171 apartments, with 12 ground-floor retail spaces, a dedicated co-working space […] More

Cumulus’s Hobart studio has designed Tasmania’s newest whisky distillery on the site of a 19th-century flour mill.
The Oatlands location was formerly the site of an illegal distillery, built and owned by publican John Vincent in 1837, who milled grain and produced bootleg whisky on the premises.
Located just north of Kempton in an historic town in the state’s Heartland regions, the Oatlands mill precinct reopened in 2010 as part of a restoration project, consisting of the six-storey Lincolnshire tower mill, the piggery and barn, the grainary, and the miller’s hut.
The new facility took two years to design and construct, adapting the 1830s flour mill to house a state of the art hub for whisky making. Founder and former property developer John Ibrahim’s vision for the distillery was inspired by the heritage buildings onsite, resulting in a respectful silhouette that acknowledges the site’s heritage as one of the oldest Georgian settlements in Australia. This was not Ibrahim’s first foray in whisky distilleries: he previously purchased Dysart House in Kempton in, which came to house Redlands Distillery in 2012, now the Old Kempton Distillery.

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The Callington Mill and Distillery, designed by Cumulus. Image:

Adam Gibson

The material palette of the new facility was influenced by the local heritage code requirements for masonry cladding, referencing the area’s preserved Georgian sandstone edifices. “The predominant brick has a soft and chalky patina that references the sandstone of the surrounding buildings,” a spokesperson for Cumulus said.
The gabled form of the new distillery is also derived from historical precedents, resembling the simple forms of rural sheds quintessential to the area. “The design navigates the need to house the industrial manufacturing requirements of a working whisky distillery while providing the immersive visitor experience of a traditional cellar door,” Cumulus said.
The interiors have been designed to reference the rich tones of the grain spirit, incorporating Tasmanian oak joinery, brass fittings, low lighting, and amber-hued marble finishes.
The Callington Mill and Distillery officially opened in October 2022 and is now the biggest whisky distillery in Tasmania to date. Ibrahim said the new distillery will help to put Tasmanian single-malt whisky on the world map, harnessing Tasmanian’s clean air, water, and premium local barley with a modern facility that can keep up with international demand.
Tasmanian premier Jeremy Rockliff said the Callington Mill and Distillery is one of the “best-known landmarks of Oatlands” and investment is already providing valuable employment opportunities and a tourist destination for the region. More

Dulux has announced the finalists for its 37th annual Colour Awards, recognizing the innovative use of colour in the built environment. “This year’s finalists demonstrate the capacity for colour to be a fundamental and versatile design tool,” said Dulux colour and communications manager Andrea Lucena-Orr. Comprising 113 entries from across Australian and New Zealand, the […] More

A new mutual recognition agreement (MRA) between Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand will begin on 25 May 2023, making it easier for architects to register across the three countries. The agreement has been signed by the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA), the UK Architects Registration Board, and the New Zealand Registered […] More

The Naomi Milgrom Foundation has selected 1995 Pritzker Prize Laureate Tadao Ando to design the tenth MPavilion, which will be installed in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. “I have long admired how Tadao Ando responds to and incorporates the particularity of a place into his design, and his belief that architecture can shape a society,” said […] More

An additional $97.6 million has been committed to Perth Concert Hall redevelopments, the WA government announced. The funds nearly triple the total funding for the project, which is now valued at $150 million. WA premier Mark McGowan said issues around structural maintenance had emerged during the project’s design phase and added that now-funded works would […] More