Philip Cox-designed Dural homestead Yanderra listed: Title Tattle

By Jonathan Chancellor
Tuesday, 08 May 2012

Yanderra, the five-bedroom Dural house designed by architect Philip Cox, has been listed with $2.75 million plus hopes, the first offering since its early 1980s construction.

It was the commission of the now national chairman of law firm Baker & McKenzie, Bruce Hambrett, the prominent disputes and insolvency lawyer, and his author wife, Jo. They bought the two-hectare land as a bare block for $145,000 in 1981 when Porter's dairy farm was subdivided. It’s nothing like a dairy farm now, with gardens featuring even a veggie patch.

The single-level pavilion-style house comes with pool and horse stables. Neil Keene of LJ Hooker Dural is marketing it as “an inspired reinterpretation of the traditional Australian homestead, albeit with romantic revival architectural traces”.

The grounds have been a regular in the Sydney Open Garden scheme, given it was planned for sustainability. It comes with sandstone terraces planted with lavender and cherry guavas, hedges of camellia, lilly-pilly and banksia. There’s indigenous and rainforest species under giant turpentines.

Possibly the house deserves a mention in the series of lectures exploring historical and contemporary perspectives in architecture, heritage, design and development of Australian housing. The series presents eight conversations in which historians and writers examine different types of housing, from 19th-century villas and Californian bungalows to McMansions and emergency shelters.

This week Philip Goad, professor of architecture and director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne and the editor of the Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2011), talks on the dialogue between nature and culture in forms of the contemporary Australian villa.

Villa
Thursday 10 May
Scott Carlin, Curator, Historic Houses Trust
Philip Goad, Professor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne

Mansion
Thursday 17 May
Dr Charles Pickett, Curator of Design and Built Environment at the Powerhouse Museum
Jonathan Chancellor, Managing Editor, Property Observer

Beach shack
Thursday 24 May
Dr Michael Bogle, Design Historian
Peter Stutchbury, Peter Stutchbury Architects

Terrace - SOLD OUT
Thursday 31 May
Keri Huxley, social and political scientist and former mayor of Woollahra Council
Hannah Tribe, Founding Principal, Tribe Studio Architects

Project home
Thursday 7 June
Dr Judith O’Callaghan, Senior Lecturer, The University of New South Wales
Tone Wheeler, Principal Architect, Environa Studio

Portable
Thursday 14 June
Megan Martin, Head, Collections and Access
Sean Godsell, Sean Godsell Architects