Rural Legacy – Merindah Park House by Richard Cole Architects

Deeply connected to the landscape, Merindah Park House is a highly crafted home of lasting fortitude that directs sightlines to sweeping views. Richard Cole Architects, together with the impassioned client who built the home, layer raw and robust materials, responding to context with precision.

Overlooking Kangaroo Valley, Merindah Park House sits long and lean atop a rolling terrain that awards views at every opportunity. The floor plan branches out into two directions, creating are pair of wings that meet at a central gathering space. As a family farmhouse that is frequently visited by guests, the resulting home needed to be able to contract and expand without affecting the feeling of intimacy and enclosure. Through creating a home deeply immersed within nature through physical location and materiality, Richard Cole Architects captures the essence of the surrounds.

Through creating a home deeply immersed within nature through physical location and materiality, Richard Cole Architects captures the essence of the surrounds.

Between the two divergent forms sits an open courtyard space constructed from a series of materials synonymous with the location. As a protective and walled outdoor space, its narrowness offers a differing experience from the more vast and open areas on the site. A combination of concrete, stone, steel, glass, dry pressed bricks and grey ironbark are used throughout. Underpinned by a sustainable heart, the building acts as a response to place, allowing natural ventilation to cool in summer and the chosen materiality to protect from harsh elements. Taking inspiration from a more traditional rural typology of bricked woolsheds and Georgian-style outbuildings, the weighted feel of the home anchors the form into the landscape.

Resulting from a longstanding relationship between Richard Cole Architects and the owner, the process saw a curiosity with construction and craftsmanship grow stronger as each element came together across the site. Ensuring clear visibly throughout was integral. However, as the location sees regular cold weather, an experimental element was explored to ensure the home was open to visibility and light but protected from low temperatures. This saw a focus on sustainable energy capture and storage inform material choices and the home’s structure.

Underpinned by a sustainable heart, the building acts as a response to place, allowing natural ventilation to cool in summer and the chosen materiality to protect from harsh elements.

Built as a legacy home for generations to come, Merindah Park House and its comprising parts are designed to capture marks of time and weather with grace. Richard Cole Architects focuses on an approach of simplicity and refinement, ensuring a continued relevance and timelessness by forming an efficient response to context.