The best heritage properties are not preserved as museum pieces, they are adapted to how people live now. At Maydene the value is not only in the house but in how the landscape around it is understood, restored and put back into use. Written for The Gatekeepers Club by Lindsay Mattinson of Mattinson Associates.
The estate, as designed
The principle
The best heritage properties are not preserved as museum pieces. They are adapted to how people live now. Increasingly the value sits not only in the house itself but in how the wider landscape is understood, restored and put back into use, which is a slower question than a renovation and a more consequential one.
The work at Maydene
At Maydene the house is being remodelled to sit more naturally in its setting, rather than the setting being tidied up around the house. The estate is being reworked as a connected environment: new landscape moments, contemporary ancillary buildings, a biodiversity strategy, and wellness placed at the centre of the design rather than added to it.
What it teaches
A house and its land are one asset or they are two problems. Reading an estate as a single connected environment, before any drawing is made, is what separates a restoration that settles into its place from one that will always look recently arrived.
At a glance
The TGC view
The House, Restored is a standing series with Lindsay Mattinson of Mattinson Associates, our design and heritage partner. We introduce clients buying or restoring an estate to the people who read the land and the building as one problem, which is the stage at which the expensive mistakes are avoided.
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We hold the relationships, the rooms and the access. Tell us the dates and we handle the rest.
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