Mill Hill Retreat

2017

State Award, RAIA Queensland Architecture Awards, 2020

House of the Year, Sunshine Coast Region, RAIA Queensland Architecture Awards, 2020

Shortlisted, National Awards 2020

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Siting and locating a new house within an immense natural landscape is a rare privilege and an opportunity to reflect upon the intimate act of placemaking. For Our Practice, the question is always how to occupy and experience the landscape on meaningful terms, how to add but not subtract through the introduction of a piece of architecture.

Mill Hill Retreat has been carefully sited on a topographic threshold between a serviceable hilltop saddle and the precipice of a green wilderness void beyond. An opposing escarpment rises to enclose the principle northern views with a broad rim arc, providing a curious datum in the Landscape.

At the largest order of scale, the built form of the house gathers portions of the landscape in a series of informal courtyards – conceived as ‘a formative chain of ponds’. Dividing the plan allows for the continuity of the landscape, from ridge to valley, to bisect the plan and affords each half of the house the freedom to explore its own particular relationship with the Site. This paired set of relationships are expressed through the contrasting materiality and tectonics of the house, facilitating alternative modes of framing the view and connecting the interior to the exterior.

One half of the program; the social rooms, are intentionally ‘grounded’, retained slab on ground, open plan terraces which mediate the landfall. Enfolded in mass masonry construction with select openings to the north slowly introduce the horizon and sky as one descends to the courtyard level and beyond to the pool.

The complimentary dormitory spaces are ‘aerial’ in nature. A framed lightweight build, clad in vertical ship-lapped reclaimed local hardwood timbers. Rooms here are elevated above the contours, project over the outdoor room and cantilevered over the courtyard.

Entry is via a thin glazed bridge/ walkway, intended to be open throughout the day, permits the landscape and visitors to flow through the plan and trace the sectional narrative. The entry is a planned as a pause point on route which reframes the landscape beyond, before entering the house proper. 

The project is on a semi-isolated rural lot within the Baroon Pocket Dam catchment, the site is protected by local council biodiversity, waterways and wetlands overlay. The Client’s original brief was for a self-sufficient building responsible for generating its own solar energy [5.2kW], water harvesting [62 kL] and advanced secondary waste-water treatment systems. Mill Hill Retreat achieved a 6 star energy efficiency rating.

The cool, damp seasonal climes of the Sunshine Coast hinterland demanded the inclusion of a hearth and prompted the inclusion of brick and local stone. Both elements are employed as ‘permanent’ mass counterpoints to the lightweight, ‘temporal’ presence of hardwood. Selection of brick and mortar contrast with the surrounding environment, with the intention the brickwork should embody the notion of an urban occupation of the landscape – a civil presence in nature.

Photography: Christopher Frederick Jones