The Cape Schanck House is like a box kite flying high above Bass Strait, twisting around its long axis as it dives into the top of the dunes. The Medhurst House is a glazed pavilion floating in Miesian serenity above serried rows of vines. In contrast to these ancient earthbound types, the Cape Schanck and Medhurst houses are based on a typology that defies architectural tradition and history. Rather than grounded, they appear airborne. The Cape Schanck House is a black elongated rectilinear tube of space that resembles a giant box kite landing on the dunes. The Medhurst House, floating above the vineyard, is a pure Platonic glazed box recalling the first seemingly airborne building, Mies van der Rohe 's Farnsworth House (1946-51). Denton Corker Marshall 's interest in early 20th century art and architectural theory, specifically Amedee Ozenfant 's and Le Corbusier 's formulation of Purism, in which objects were represented as basic machine-made forms stripped of all detail; Kazimir Malevich 's Tectons, which were scaleless architectural forms devised to accommodate the unimagined new social programs that the Russian Revolution anticipated; and El Lissitzky 's PROUNs, paintings of gravity-defying, defunctionalised, architectonic objects: what he enigmatically called 'the station where one changes from painting to architecture '. In short, Denton Corker Marshall returns to the theoretical roots of the Modernist project to bridge the gap that opened up between art and architecture in the early 20th century. Using a Purist technique similar to Ozenfant 's and Le Corbusier 's and to Aldo Rossi 's, Denton Corker Marshall distils the many parts of a building into essential components - posts, columns, beams; and walls, floors, roofs - stripping away detail, scale and function and abstracting them into Purist elements: sticks and blades. The architectural aesthetics of both houses are derived from a common formal system of sticks and blades, the range of compositional forms using only these two elements appears limitless; and like Malevich 's tectons, unaffected by program or scale,Program and scale are no longer intrinsic: purpose and size become evident only with use. For Denton Corker Marshall, changing building scale and locating them in the landscape, might be argued that 'everything is art '. They make objects that are like El Lissitzky 's PROUNs, 'the station where one changes from painting to architecture '. they attempt a reconciliation between contemporary art and architecture. For them architecture is land art. Architecture and land art The building as an expressive gesture on the land is for Denton Corker Marshall a significant and conscious objective, but one alluded to by them only in passing. Denton Corker Marshall 's laconic pronouncements on connections between their architecture and land art amount to just a few lines buried in the project descriptions of media releases, The Cape Schanck House 'looks nothing like a house, but rather an object flying in from space and rotating along its long axis as it is about to land. The house is a dynamic enigma in the windswept setting. The Medhurst House is 'two black horizontal strokes drawn on a wide rolling quilt of well behaved vineyards.
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The Medhurst House will never be seen from above, yet it has been resolved by the designers into a pair of carefully contrived sets of concentric rectangles. One set is formed from the elements of the roof, the other from the paved terrace and insert of lawn. The roof and terrace rectangles overlay a staggered set of lower-level cross-walls. From this bird 's-eye view, the building is rendered as a two-dimensional composition of rectangles (blades) superimposed over much narrower rectangles (sticks). To one side of this PROUN-like abstraction are the regular, precise, parallel rows of European grape vines; to the other side, random Australian native gum trees. As land art, the Medhurst House is juxtaposed against two notions of 'nature ': cultivated and wild. At a metaphysical level, the house stands between order and chaos. On one side, it opens to the order of the vineyard below; and on the other side, it turns its back to chaos, presenting to the bush a wall composed from two long green horizontal sticks. Existentially, this composition of sticks and blades (wall, floor, roof) provides a sheltered prospect, a place to stand with one 's back
The Medhurst House will never be seen from above, yet it has been resolved by the designers into a pair of carefully contrived sets of concentric rectangles. One set is formed from the elements of the roof, the other from the paved terrace and insert of lawn. The roof and terrace rectangles overlay a staggered set of lower-level cross-walls. From this bird 's-eye view, the building is rendered as a two-dimensional composition of rectangles (blades) superimposed over much narrower rectangles (sticks). To one side of this PROUN-like abstraction are the regular, precise, parallel rows of European grape vines; to the other side, random Australian native gum trees. As land art, the Medhurst House is juxtaposed against two notions of 'nature ': cultivated and wild. At a metaphysical level, the house stands between order and chaos. On one side, it opens to the order of the vineyard below; and on the other side, it turns its back to chaos, presenting to the bush a wall composed from two long green horizontal sticks. Existentially, this composition of sticks and blades (wall, floor, roof) provides a sheltered prospect, a place to stand with one 's back