LOCATION Anglesea, Victoria, Australia
"Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration and love,” said the famous 20th-century American architect Louis Khan, and many decades later, it happens to be a bullseye description of the process of making John Wardle’s Burnt Earth House.
Wardle, partner at Wardle Studio, designed the house during the extensive Melbourne lockdowns of 2021, sitting solo in his Kew study overlooking the city, generating reams of rapidfire ideas on butter paper. Only later, with a return to the office and some sense of normality, did it pass through many desks within the practice throughout the documentation phase.
With his deep knowledge of the 780 square metre Anglesea site he and his wife Susan had owned for 16 years, he admits, “Initially, the plan…
