Mount Hotham, in Victoria’s high country, is a long way from Rome. Although the mountainous terrain doesn’t feature Roman relics, it does lay claim to a house designed by one of Italy’s leading architects, Giovanni D’Ambrosio. “I’ve never experienced such wide open places before. From here, you don’t see any other buildings,” says D’Ambrosio, who was invited by Australian developers the Ray Group to design a landmark house in the snowfields.
Tony Cannon, the Ray Group’s director, first came across D’Ambrosio’s work in Bali, where he was impressed by the Macaroni Bar and the Nero Bar. “His designs are quite extraordinary. I’d never seen such a rich use of materials before. In the Nero, he used timber in hundreds of different lengths to create texture and depth,” says Cannon. Rome-based D’Ambrosio is also a talented industrial designer, with designs that include a chair for Bernini and a lamp for Firme Di Vetro.
Adept at turning his attention from furniture to architecture, D’Ambrosio was keen to take on the commission to design a landmark house on the Australian mountain, setting a benchmark for any future development in one of Victoria’s premier ski resorts. The ‘DP Village’ at Mount Hotham (short for Dinner Plain, the spot where cattlemen once stopped for dinner) now supports a number of houses on sites varying in size from 240 up to a 1,000 square metres. Regardless of size, most of the houses at Hotham shun the elements, with small-paned windows and high walls. D’Ambrosio was never likely to follow this model; he certainly would never do it with a house on the Italian slopes. “Why would you shut out this view or this magnificent snow gum?” the architect asks.
D’Ambrosio was captivated by the rudimentary 19th century corrugated iron and timber huts, once used by Australian cattlemen roving the highlands. Although the new house sits on one of the smallest of sites in the village (240 square metres), it is nonetheless home to Mount Hotham’s most heroic architecture. Constructed of steel, concrete, timber and locally quarried stone, D’Ambrosio created a structure that appears to be carved out of the site, firmly anchored to the ground by a massive stone fireplace that’s expressed both internally and externally. A twenty tonne cantilevered fireplace is supported by two hundred cubic square metres of concrete poured below the surface. “The fireplace is pivotal in the design. The hearth has always been important in architectural history,” says D’Ambrosio, who was partially inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.
However, in contrast to Wright’s low-slung horizontal houses, D’Ambrosio’s design appears to be in lift-off position, aiming towards the moon and stars. Dubbed ‘Under the Moonlight’, the design focuses on the heavens, as well as the one hundred and fifty year old snow gum tree on the property. “When I was a teenager, I used to love riding my motorbike up the mountains with friends. The evenings were spent around the campfire,” says D’Ambrosio, who was keen to engage with the outdoors. Like Wright, who designed furniture for his houses, D’Ambrosio also designed the furniture for the Mount Hotham house.
Unlike the other structures on Dinner Plain, D’Ambrosio’s design features a forty-five degree pitched roof to prevent the built-up of snow, giving nine-metre high ceilings at the highest point. And unlike most of the houses on the mountain, where windows are typically covered with blinds or curtains, there’s a wonderful transparency sense of between the indoor and outdoor spaces. To further blur the division between indoors and outdoors, D’Ambrosio used the same materials on both sides of the glass walls, stone, wood and concrete.
The stone used for the fireplace extends to form a protective canopy over the living area, while the staircase, located behind the fireplace, is also made of what appears to be one solid block of Castlemaine stone. Opposite the living area is the kitchen and another stone nook, used as a media enclave (for television, stereo or simply reading). “It’s really just one large open space, with crevices to escape to,” says D’Ambrosio modestly.
The fireplace grabs your attention, as does the soaring timber-clad ceilings and the monumental steel girders that support the large glass paned windows, some of which extend to four metres in diameter. “Manufacturing the windows was probably one of the most challenging aspects of the design. They’re double glazed and vacuum-sealed. We’d never built anything like this in Australia before,” says Cannon.
Although the house appears substantial in size, it has only two bedrooms. “Our brief was to create a glamorous house, something you’d image Frank Sinatra escaping to in the 50s and 60s. Maybe in Palm Springs,” says Cannon, who hopes that modern day Rat Packers will make the long journey down under to experience D’Ambrosio’s design. Sinatra would have certainly relished the spacious main bedroom, overlooking the living areas. He would also have enjoyed luxuriating in the ensuite, with its built-in day bed that comfortably accommodates two to three people, and its spa, with cascading water feature. As D’Ambrosio says, “it is a fantasy house for someone. But it’s also a house where nature is the dream. You feel as though you can almost touch the branches”.
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- Website
- http://www.giovannidambrosio.com
- Telephone
- 39066869760
- Address
- Studio Giovanni D’Ambrosio Via Monserrato, 34 00186 Rome Italy
