We travel to a Glenn Murcutt-designed home whose looks and occupants have changed during its lifetime, but the magic Murcutt essence remains.

Habitus Editor Paul McGillick discovers how relationships have informed Glenn Murcutt’s Jamberoo house. This article appears Issue 02 of Habitus Magazine, on sale Wednesday 17 December 2008. Photography by Anthony Browell

Any house by Glenn Murcutt is about relationships – client, site, landscape, materials, climate – but the White House in Jamberoo, south of Sydney, is especially fascinating for the layering of relationships which have come about over time. Paul McGillick explores a house which seems to have only now, after almost thirty years, discovered what it always wanted to be.

Built around a fireplace which remained from a dairy farm house, the Fredericks House was intended for the manager of a dairy farm. But the Fredericks family decided to build another house for the manager and live in their new Glenn Murcutt house themselves.

That was in 1982. Fast forward twenty years to a Saturday night dinner party…

To read the rest of this, and many other great articles, pick up your copy of Habitus 02, out Wednesday 17 December 2008. Subscribe here

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