Merchant Builders home of Peter and Felicity Spear
‘PIRILILLIA’ AT BATESFORD
We spent our childhoods in what are now described as peri-urban spaces. Spaces where we could run free, nurture gardens and keep animals. In 1977, with two young sons, we were lured back to the peri-urban, then described as rural-residential. We purchased our 2 hectare lot and built our home in the first subdivision of land in Batesford, west of Geelong, through which the Moorabool River flows and which has some significant environmental landmarks. In the 1970’s there was a developing realisation that to preserve Australia’s rich biodiversity, and increasingly fragile flora and fauna, we needed to start ‘planting native’. Over 46 years, from a bare paddock bordered with a few pine trees, now tall eucalypts, wattles, hakeas, and other native species surround our home, as well as a chorus of birdlife and kangaroos quietly grazing nearby.
Our simple, compact, light-filled and very liveable Merchant Builders home, nestles on a gently sloping site. It was designed by innovative architect Graeme Gunn. This design was originally part of a cluster housing display we found in 1977 at ‘Winter Park, in Doncaster, Melbourne. We were looking for a housing plan which was affordable, innovative and sympathetic to the landscape. Merchant Builders designs emphasised a sense of place, solar orientation, responsing to views and physical conditions, encouraging ideas of energy efficient and environmentally friendly architecture. Some of the many innovative design principles and features they pursued included pergolas, exposed brickwork and timber beams, passive solar energy and the use of sustainable materials.
We have nurtured our compact home and it has nurtured us. Through its generous windows, and timber surfaces it reaches out to the evolving landscape. It’s a home for work and contemplation as well as communication and geniality. Beyond it we have a barn where wooden boats and other creative projects have evolved, and a studio yurt, a place of work for the artist for almost forty years. In our home’s simplicity and liveability, it continually adapts to the accumulation of experience, history and memory, resting lightly on the earth.
Merchant Builders Legacy with Professor Alan Pert
www.nexusdesigns.com.au/news/merchant-builders-legacy-with-professor-alan-pert
Autumn under the pergola revealing several birds nests
Northern aspect from the house
Kitchen family room at the centre of the house with a north-south aspect
Southerly aspect courtyard outside the kitchen family room
Kitchen end of the family room with a northern aspect
Sitting room – west end with north-south aspect
Dining room north-south aspect
Sitting room – west end with north-south aspect
Felicity in her studio – the yurt
Office looking north
Dining room and sitting room divided by the fire place chimney
Beginnings