 | RADARDELIGHT Philip Drew explores the forgotten pleasures of Ian MacKay’s house for David Moore at Lobster Bay.
Photos David Moore.
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The bush around David Moore’s Lobster
Bay house is thick with angophoras. These
wildly contorted and intensely sensual trees
invite comparisons with a photographic
series of nudes which Moore began after
he moved into the house. In these works he
approached the body in the same way as
he approached landscape, treating it as a
living changing landscape that related
directly to the forms of the angophoras and
the eroded, shoreline rocks.
Concealed in the angophoras, the house
is difficult to find. It sits isolated, astride a
bony ridge, in the shadow of a hill named
Top Rock. The house was intended as an
isolated retreat. Following the break-up of
his marriage, Moore wanted somewhere
tranquil and peaceful where he could take
his four children on weekends, which was
less trouble than camping, and which was
near the bush, so he could go bushwalking.
For convenience, it also had to be less than
two hours from Sydney.
Moore acquired the site on Highview
Road at Pretty Beach in December 1968.
On the western edge of Bouddi National
Park, occupying the north slope of the
ridge, it has wonderful views of Brisbane
Water, Ocean Beach and Pearl Beach. In
addition to the magnificent angophoras,
the site had rock outcrops covered with
scattered lichen. Moore recalls that he
“didn’t want the house to interfere with the
landscape”. He considered the land to be
more precious than anything that might be
built on it.
Ian McKay’s first scheme went out the
window fairly quickly. The second, an
irregular wing which hooked onto and
curled around a large rock outcrop on the
ridge, didn’t fare much better. MacKay was
struggling to come up with a suitable
scheme. In discussions, Moore said he
wanted the house to sit like an insect. At
this point Moore went away to think. He
then made his own sketch which became
the foundation for MacKay’s third design.
Moore’s proposal was for a roughly
symmetrical building centred around the
living space with kitchen behind, master
bedroom on one side, bunk rooms attached
to the opposite side, and the entry between
them. MacKay found this “very interesting”.
He modified it by stacking the bunk room
over the living area, making the house
perfectly symmetrical and more vertical.
MacKay introduced two standard timber
trusses propped up in an “A” by rafter
beams. At its top, the vertical face of the
truss above the opposing rafters was
exposed to let sunlight into the upper
bunkroom through horizontal louvres. To
this basic A-frame foundation, MacKay
added wing roofs on each side to cover the
two bedrooms. The resulting pyramid shape
is like a bird, but it also resembles a tent
pitched with its guy ropes stretched wide
from the central support.
The house took nearly four years from
start to finish. The design and the drawings
were completed in September 1969. The
builder, Peter Velling, did not start till March
1971 and the job was completed and
occupied in June 1972. The total cost was
$27,524, including $2,632 in PC items.
This figure seems astonishing when
compared to today’s inflated costs. The
bearers and rafters were made of sawn
Oregon lightly sanded, with 3/16" plywood
for ceiling and walls, and a Super-Six A/C
roof. The Oregon has weathered to a
satisfying grey and now blends with the
surrounding angophoras, small blood
woods, and coastal banksias.
While the house feels like a tent inside,
its unity is complicated by the upper
sleeping level overlooking the main living
area. The simplicity of tent living is echoed
by the placement of the deck next to the
living space facing west for the afternoon
sun. The bunk room is snug and cave like
with views out through the trusses on each
side and down over the living area. This
creates a wonderful connection between
children and adults and moves the space
vertically. The ladder up to the bunk room
provides one of the most arresting details.
This challenging piece of climbing
apparatus is made of individual timber foot
pads mounted on a metal pipe. MacKay
also designed a fireplace, with the chimney
flue on the diagonal following the ceiling
slope. However the fire smoked and people
cracked their heads on the hot flue, so it
was replaced by a more practical vertical
flue and a Canadian fireplace design
passed to Moore by Colin Madigan.
The Moore House is obliquely Wrightian,
yet it also departs from Wright’s dicta in
significant ways. It is very Australian in its
reticence, and sits lightly on the bulging
rock shelf. And, whereas Wright often
extended a wall past the roof eaves so
that his houses appear to reach out
symbolically into the landscape, MacKay
takes his architectural cues from the
landscape. This is a crucial difference.
Where Wright starts with the “manmade” and acknowledges nature outside it,
MacKay allows the outside to work its way
into the house. The Moore House nestles
on the rock much in the way a bird might
choose to build its nest.
Moore spent 15 years eradicating the
lantana and bitou bush and getting the land
in shape. He also thinned the bush as a
precaution against the fires which
threatened the house on two or three
occasions. However, after more than 20
years, Moore’s familiarity with the site grew
to the stage where it no longer offered him
surprises and he felt a need to move on.
His children rebelled, insisting he keep the
house. This passing down of the Lobster
Bay house will add a new stratum of
knowledge to it.
The Moore house is a thoroughly
Australian masterpiece, because, while it is
subtly Wrightian, there is no obvious literal
borrowing and no noticeable quotations.
Moore came from an architectural family
(his father was the famous architect and
painter, John D. Moore, and his brother
Tony was also an architect) and he was
accustomed to exploring architecture
through his photography. He possesses a
critical architectural intelligence that at
times placed great demands on MacKay.
This has resulted in an exceptional work,
inspired by the contorted structuralism and
gestures of angophoras (that most human
of Australian trees), the bulging rock
outcrops, and the spirit of the bush itself.
The Moore House is about the transient
occupation of the land, about camping and
the bush. It derives its special outlook from
a consideration of bushwalking as
personified by the late Milo Dunphy. Non-
Aboriginal occupation of Australia has been
so brief, and as new arrivals we need to
discover the bush so we can become more
than mere sojourners.
Moore saw himself as having a custodial
role for the land. This is embodied in the
house, in the way that it rests lightly on the
rock, and to the degree that it is a catalyst
for the discovery of its surrounding.
Moore recalled later that he found new
meaning through photographing the rocks
and trees, the beaches and the ocean. The
bush, with its subtle seasonal changes,
gently affected his photographs, which are
lyrical as a result.
Philip Drew is Sydney-based architectural critic and author
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