Melbourne Art Fair, August 2014

I was recently in a cold and wintery Melbourne to set up the Melbourne Art Fair. Now in its 25th year, the fair has been completely rejuvenated and refreshed under the guidance of our client, Tim Etchells, and Fair director, Barry Keldoulis. Stiff + Trevillion's job was to review the overall organisation and design the entrance sequence, bars, cafes and Collectors Lounge. The graphic design was by Matt Utber of The Plant.

One of the many perks of this work is that I sometimes get invited to join the collectors tours. This time I went to the TarraWarra Museum of Art for their Biennial exhibition opening. A privately funded museum in the heart of the Yarra Valley, set up by Eva and Marc Besson, to show Australian art. The elegant rammed earth structure was designed by Allan Powell, a practising architect and lecturer at RMIT. The building won the Premier's Design Award in 2002. It sits confidently in the landscape its curved forms echoing the landscape of the vineyards and hills that surround it. As well as the gallery space there is a restaurant and bar that serves the estates fine Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines.

The Biennial Exhibition, 'Whisper in my mask', explores the theme of identity through painting sculpture video and installation. Indigenous Australian Daniel Boyd's two paintings stand either side of a window that he has cleverly filmed to create a third painting from the landscape beyond in the same dot covered style.

After the gallery visit we had the privilege of a lunch at John Denton's home 'View Hill House'. Denton is a founding partner of Denton Corker Marshall a global Australian practice well known in the UK principally for the Stonehenge Visitor's Centre and the Manchester Civil Justice Centre.

His house is an essay in form, and it is surprisingly restrained. Conceived as two "sticks" one of corten steel with the balanced cantilever in black aluminium, the hosue sits at the top of a hill overlooking Denton's vineyards. Any preconceived ideas were quickly dispelled, this is a beautiful study in the sculpture of form and the framing of views. It is an uncompromising statement, a man made intervention, it echoes the tin barns that are seen in the distance. He told me that there are times when the valley fills with fog and the house sits above the clouds.

Australia has a great tradition of one-off houses. In Sydney I visited an exhibition, curated by Karen McCartney, that studied the modern Australian house from the 1950's to the present day. Architects such as Robin Boyd, Glenn Murcutt and Roy Grounds, have built houses that define Australian Modern thinking, often for themselves. And the results are unique.

I talked to John Denton about building a house of your own, something I am not sure I would want to do. He said for him it only became an option in later life, the certainties and confidence of thirty years in practice allow the architect to do what they want rather than what they feel they should do.

Robin Boyd, one of the great 20th century Australian domestic architects, had this to say about being your own client:

"In his own home all his philosophy of building must surely blossom if ever it is so. Here he is both play-wright and actor, composer and executant. What manner of architect he is will be laid bare for all the world to see."