Eaglemont House by Kennedy Nolan

When the Client, owners of a building and development business in Melbourne, approached Kennedy Nolan for a new house on the steep slopes of Mount Eagle, some of the opportunities were immediately evident. Superb, uninterrupted views to the north and east and a context of mature tree canopies on the large adjoining sites formed a beautiful backdrop while affording privacy to the house and garden.

The relatively compact site was subdivided from the garden of a larger property. Consequently, it came with a covenant restricting the building envelope, ostensibly to preserve the park-like surrounds and privacy to adjoining gardens. Strict controls on protecting existing trees and augmenting the forest-like canopy of the neighbourhood with new trees also had to be considered.

The brief called for a four-bedroom house with study, playroom and gym, as well as a large garage. Consequently, the design process required a very hard-working plan and section.

“The plan had to resolve conflicting demands of amenity, privacy and aspect, and the section had to facilitate an easy ascent and descent through the house and to visually and inherently connect the seven levels – to avoid a feeling of layers and make the vertical relationships as effortless as the horizontal connections,” explains the team at Kennedy Nolan.

The result is unexpectedly medieval, a sense that there is always another thing around the corner or down a twist of stairs, and that at every turn there is a new spatial experience or an unexpected aspect.

Related post: Deepdene House By Kennedy Nolan.

“Our Client’s suggestion of Frank Lloyd Wright as a visual springboard for the house resulted in a deep, floating eave above a ribbon of vertically, articulated casement windows resting on a massive masonry plinth,” said the design team. “Because the elevated site is so exposed, we felt it was important to make the building suggestive of a rich domestic interior whilst maintaining a sense of inscrutability. To this end the exterior is intriguing – it hints at the life within, yet remains enigmatic and private.”

Eaglemont is a house designed to be there for a long time, to grow into its surroundings as the tree canopy rises around it and for this reason, it is built from robust materials which will improve in appearance as they show signs of age – natural cement render and pre-aged copper cladding.

The interior is contrasting in its warmth, texture and emphasis on refinement, beautifully complemented with furniture selections by Studio Moore. The contrast emphasises a sense of threshold, the sense of a domestic interior as a refuge that is distinct from the garden. The inhabited external spaces are also distinct – contained, textural, formal and devised as a bridge between the park-like surrounds and the softness of the interior.