hen Gertrude Stein wrote “A rose is a rose is a rose,” it wasn’t because she’d mislaid her thesaurus. Stein’s work explored the conceptual power of poetry, and her message was that the name of a thing immediately summons the symbols and emotions we associate with it. If this review simply said “a house is a house is a house,” readers (and editors!) might feel a little cheated, but it would go to the heart of this conceptually rigorous work in regional Victoria by John Wardle Architects (JWA). With its instantly recognizable silhouette of wall-roof-chimney, Bass Coast Farmhouse is almost a cartoon of our collective image of “house.” But it joins a lineage of iconic houses that approach the Platonic ideal: from the classical typologies of Roman courtyard villas and Palladian palazzi, to more
