2020 National Architecture Awards: The Lachlan Macquarie Award for Heritage Architecture

Jury citation

A significant commitment to Tasmania’s heritage has been made with the restoration of Hollow Tree House and its stables. The informed and artful peeling back of building layers reveals the original fabric, constructed at various times in the house’s history.

This award honours the shared vision of an inspired client and an adept architect. They have revealed the early settler spirit of “making do” in the isolation of the Central Highlands, while enacting the Burra Charter principle of doing “as much as necessary but as little as possible”¹ in preparing the homestead for the future.

While the architects of the new Hollow Tree House have been respectful of its past and maintained the character of the homestead through the upheaval of the construction period, their inventive and fine insertions also propose an optimistic future. Core Collective Architects’ contemporary aesthetic is nuanced and captivating against the original austerity of the Colonial Georgian homestead, resulting in an enchanting contemporary house.

Hollow Tree House will be reviewed by Judith Abell in Houses 137.

Project credits

Architect Core Collective Architects; Project team Ryan Strating, Emily Ouston, Erica Proud; Builder Paradigm Construction; Heritage consultant Praxis Environment; Structural engineer JMG Engineers and Planners; Building surveyor Optimus Building Surveyors; Hydraulic consultant Overeem Gas and Plumbing.

Hollow Tree House is located in Hollow Tree, Tasmania, on the land of the palawa/pakana people of lutruwita.