Opening the Big Blue House, photograph by Harrison Jay Dee, 2026.
The Big Blue House is a small yet tall domestic framework that operates as a living membrane — shifting with season, use, and ecology.
The project draws from the inhabitants favourite spaces and previous homes: a blue weatherboard house, a studio cabin, and a former church.
The approximately 9 × 9 metre footprint is inspired by the residents’ experiences whilst camping, forming a ‘tin tent’ that can be opened and closed facing the suns path to the north of the site.
The ground floor plan operates as a single room divided by one internal wall, producing a front-of-house / back-of-house program with the ground floor operating as ‘workshop.' A small opening through a central internal internal wall enables a connection to the street with neighbours from the kitchen. Above, a minimal mezzanine holds the couples working art studios — with a sleeping place between.
The structure is intentionally incomplete.
Its framework is designed to be edited, reworked, and adapted over time and as the couples needs change. Existing trees and a regenerated bush corridor planted during the build determined the building’s placement, allowing the house to settle into the site rather than dominate it whilst it was construced.
At the southern edge of the site stands an elderly Marri, estimated to be two to three hundred years old. The house gives the Marri space, central to the project as an existing resident on the site.
The Big Blue House is imagined as a companion to the Marri and to the site’s emerging ecology — engaging in quiet exchange with vineyards to the east through an edible garden composed of endemic, introduced, and novel species.
Located on Wadandi Country in Cowaramup, Western Australia, the house will be opened to the public during Margaret River Open Studios in 2026 as part of the Pigment Pictures exhibition.
Lamp Living, analog collage, 2024.
Tent Room Window, analog collage, 2024.
2026/06/13 The Big Blue House
CATALOGUE : archived
LOCATION : Wadandi Country, Cowaramup, Western Australia
DESIGNED BY : Alice Anna Ford
BUILT BY : Redgate Building
DESIGN MENTOR: Karen Ford
CLIENT: Alice Anna Ford and Harrison Jay Dee
WITH GRATITUDE TO: Grant Johnson
this project is dedicated to our resident Marri