Enclosed garden and terrace: using landscape ideas to review two recent Australian houses

It appears that fresh insights into architecture may be achieved by using the lens of landscape to reflect on architectural ideas and built projects: prospect-refuge theory allowed Hildebrand to postulate deep-seated universal preference for Wright’s houses; landscape ideas concerning topography and the forest have been used to re-assess Aalto’s architecture; and the concept of the enclosed garden has been used by Aben and de Wit to review modern and contemporary projects. Landscape discourse appears to be a valuable critical tool with which to present new perspectives on architecture, especially in connection with the natural world. This paper uses the lens of landscape to review two houses by influential Sydney architects: the Palm Garden House by Richard Leplastrier, and the Kangaroo Valley House by Bruce Rickard. These contemporary houses serve as vehicles through which to consider the kinds of insights that landscape discourse may bring to architectural history. The designs of both houses demonstrate significant meditation on human relationships with the natural world, landscape, and site, while also transposing architectural ideas from various cultures and eras into eastern Australian settings. The walled garden and the levelled terrace are landscape concepts which carry historical and cultural significance as well as contemporary resonances. The pisé-walled Palm Garden House is reviewed as an enclosed garden, while the Kangaroo Valley house, located on a hillside terrace, is considered as a small villa and patio. Existing literature and personal experience provide the bases for this paper's ‘thought experiment’.