Touch the earth lightly': the Australian home that floats above the landscape

"“The house teaches you things, Lynne Eastaway says. Today, a choir of cicadas fill the scrub with a rhythm that rises and falls. On other days, there may be visits from birds, goannas, echidnas, wombats, wallabies and kangaroos. The bush ends, and the house begins, she says. You're not the centre; you're just part of it. That's the thing you learn.”"

"“Western life has forgotten that we're not above nature. It can affect us and we can affect it too. Living here has been a wake-up call to living life. This is the kind of thing that happens when you live in a house designed by the pioneering architect Glenn Murcutt.”"

"“Eastaway's house known usually as the Ball-Eastaway House on the 10-hectare block of dry sclerophyll forest north-west of Sydney, was built in 1983 at the request of Eastaway and her former partner, the artist Sydney Ball, in the early days of Murcutt's career.”"

"“Ball's only demand was that it include a single, gallery-style wall on which to hang a painting. Glenn Murcutt: touch the Earth lightly with your housing footprint A friend suggested Murcutt, and the three met for lunch before taking Murcutt out to see the land where the couple had been camping on and off. Ever curious, he walked off into the bush for hours.”"

A house in dry sclerophyll forest creates daily lessons through living nature. Cicadas, birds, goannas, echidnas, wombats, wallabies, and kangaroos appear as rhythms and visitors. The bush ends and the house begins, reinforcing that people are not the center of the world but part of it. Western life is described as forgetting that nature influences humans and that humans influence nature. Living there becomes a wake-up call for how to live. The Ball-Eastaway House, designed by Glenn Murcutt and built in 1983, was commissioned by Lynne Eastaway and Sydney Ball. The project began with a modest budget and a request for a single gallery-style wall for painting, while Murcutt carefully sited the home within the landscape.

Read at www.theguardian.com