1950s-1970s that were rediscovered and appreciated by the local architecture community in the 1980s-1990s. Dorney had worked with the Burley Griffins in Melbourne prior to World War II. Dorney’s own Park Beach House (1957), Park Beach Hobart, was, like most houses he designed, an expressive lightweight steel structure, assembled in a manner akin to the modular systems of Bailey Bridges, an approach to construction he experienced firsthand during WWII.75 The mimetic roof forms of Dorney’s houses echo the patterns of the scalloped bays of the Derwent River and the folded silhouette of mountains and hills that contain it, seen, for example in his ‘butterfly’ house Churchill Avenue, Sandy Bay, Tasmania. It could be stated, therefore, that his architecture was concerned with more than questions of function and construction.76 An affinity with the Burley Griffins’ architectural thinking, and in particular, their fascination with the Australian landscape is evident in this mimesis. It is the mimetic quality of these dramatic steel and glass houses that separates Dorney’s work from the structural expressiveness of the Melbourne school typified by the Peter McIntyre house built on the banks of the Yarra River that was concerned with the athletic properties of suspension and cantilever. Although essentially simple, Dorney’s mimetic approach, in which the greater landscape affects, to some extent, the object, is germane to t er r oi r’s understanding of site as an extended field of affective possibility.
Figure 48: Peppermint Bay, exterior view of the simple spatial mimesis of room and tree. 75
Information on Dorney has come from personal conversations with his son Paddy and from Obituary: J. H. Esmond Dorney 1906-1991. 1991. Transition (36-37): 126-135, and Spence, Rory, [1949-2004.]. 1992. James Henry Esmond Dorney 1906-1991 [obituary]. Architecture Australia 81, (3) (Apr): 10 1991?
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Dorney also enjoyed drawing butterflies, an interest he developed while serving in the jungles of Java, Indonesia, during WWII. Neil Wade, ‘J H Esmond Dorney Architect’, RAIA Tasmanian Chapter Bulletin, 1988.
A terroir of terroir - a brief history of design places
The third dining space at Peppermint Bay was thought of in terms of mimetic exchange between room, subject and landscape and works as a fulcrum in the spatial arrangement of the building. The room faces an oak tree. The ceiling of the room rises up to embrace the canopy which is trimmed to the height of the head of the folding glass wall between tree and room. The vaulting ceilings and the warbling, horizontal glazing lines mimic the ridge and fold lines of Tasmanian hills; the dark colour of the exterior is designed to disappear, a shadow in the landscape with a surprise inside. Peppermint Bay, therefore, seemed to
Richard Blythe RMIT 2008
19/05/2009
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