Gunn Ridge House | Kennedy Nolan

Graeme Gunn originally designed this house for John Ridge, who with David Yencken founded Merchant Builders. 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. While the house doesn’t have heritage protection it certainly should, and our strategy was to approach the design as if it had. We proposed precise interventions alongside restoration of the original fabric including an eccentric black timber skillion form, a new childrens’ wing and a complex west-facing terrace incorporating planted zones. Our design also adds moments of craft and intensity, generous apertures, clarifies complexity and proposes freshness using colour and materiality which represents the personalities and tastes of the current owners.