Introduction

“You are virtually in the trees and there is this immediacy between you and the water and the trees and the landscape.” Bruce Rickard, in an interview with Houses magazine, is talking about his house at Cottage Point, the third that he designed and built for his family.

In each of his own houses, Bruce Rickard took the opportunity to experiment with various design elements and building techniques before using them on his clients’ houses. In the case of the Rickard House III, he started employing a grid of timber columns for the first time, an idea he subsequently returned to a number of times. This allowed the house to be opened up in a way that hadn’t been possible before; letting it, essentially, blend quite effortlessly into the surrounding eucalypt tops and the quiet waters of Cowan Creek.

Its openness and the immediacy with its environment were the first things architect Genevieve Furzer noticed about the four-bedroomed split-level house when she and photographer husband Simon Kenny bought it 17 years ago, moving in with their three young children.

“It was so close to nature, you could really interact with it,” she says. “Apart from the wildlife, it was things like lying in bed and watching the moon rise that made it a very special place to be.”

When Genevieve Furzer and Simon Kenny bought the house, it had been neglected for some time, “but we could very easily see its potential”. She carefully refurbished it, consulting closely at every stage with Bruce Rickard to make sure he approved of any changes.