Gunn Ridge House

Graeme Gunn originally designed this house for John Ridge, who with David Yencken founded Merchant Builders.  The house is the largest of four connected houses designed for a large lot on Grange Road, Toorak and is sited at the end of the block which is bounded by Winifred Crescent Reserve on Alexandra Avenue, beside the Yarra – what a site!

Merchant Builders were true innovators, challenging the orthodoxies of the conventional Australian house in a way that current project home providers absolutely do not.  Merchant Builders used a number of young Architects that went on to significant careers in Victoria, but Graeme Gunn stood out as the key contributor.  The Ridge house also included the work of other key Merchant Builders collaborators, Jan Faulkner designing interiors and Ellis Stones, the garden.  Key elements of the Merchant Builder house are evident – courtyard planning, a balanced relationship between interior and garden, an emphasis on native Australian plants, expressive structure, a reduced construction palette, textural materiality, passive solar design and a serious investigation of a modern Australian vernacular.  At the Ridge house, these elements are elevated and amplified by raked ceilings, spatial variety and complex engagement with terrain.  While the house doesn’t have heritage protection it certainly should, and our strategy was to approach the design as if it had.

The highly design-literate Clients loved the original house and were committed to a sensitive re-imagining but understanding heritage as a living thing meant that they did not want to be too constrained by an overly reverential approach, which would certainly not be in the spirit of either Merchant Builders or Graeme Gunn.

John and Molly Ridge had one daughter, but our Client had three children and so additional accommodation was required, as was a desire for more contemporary bathroom and kitchen amenity. Difficulties of the existing house arose from a garage designed without the assistance of a traffic engineer, and while the central courtyard was one of the most valued parts of the site, the apertures were constrained as was the interface with the rear garden – disconnected both physically and visually by a later addition. 

With these things in mind, we proposed precise interventions alongside restoration of the original fabric.  To the south we perched an eccentric black timber skillion form providing accommodation for an enlarged ensuite, dressing room and a (hers) study complementing the existing (his) study.  A new childrens’ wing was sunk down to the ground plane facilitating a complex west-facing terrace incorporating planted zones.  A car turntable in an expansive entry parterre serves as a hardstand, playing surface and party platform and leads gently down broad steps to a garden and swimming pool sensitively re-worked by Fiona Brockhoff.  Our design also adds moments of craft and intensity, generous apertures, clarifies complexity and proposes freshness which also represents the personalities and tastes of the current owners who bring their own love of art, colour, entertaining and a boisterous family life.