Grand Designs Australia TV House Lozenge-shaped home
This lozenge-shaped home, which featured on TV’s Grand Designs Australia, is as bold as it is unusual.
This lozenge-shaped home, which featured on TV’s Grand Designs Australia, is as bold as it is unusual.
Cate and Nick Foskett wanted a home that was unique to them, so their search in South Australia inevitably led them off the beaten track. But taking on a vineyard is no small feat, especially when neither owner – one a Silicon Valley whizz-kid and the other an opera singer – had any experience of cultivating grapes. After buying the vineyard, the pair took the radical step of studying viticulture at university while constructing their new home and running a farm. This wasn’t just a building project, it was a complete change of lifestyle.
Nick and Cate seized the chance to further their education and their careers. ‘I really enjoyed going back to university,’ says Cate. ‘I was finding my opera career less challenging and this was a good departure.’
A commercial Shiraz and Chardonnay vineyard with a whopping 42 hectares, the land provided ample opportunity to create an unusual structure that offers more than meets the eye. An eye-shaped house was the chosen design, and the goal was to build a home that covered all eventualities. Nick and Cate worked with architect Max Pritchard on a structure that seems fairly ordinary from the exterior, but reveals its curves and connecting tower on closer inspection. ‘We wanted to create something that looks like a normal house, but as you get closer you see it’s more architectural than it looks. It’s certainly not your average rectangular box,’ says Nick.