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Pathos might best describe a desire for a big gesture in a little project. Compressed, thinned out, or bland translations;homage to attempts to make something out of almost nothing are the area of this work. The pathetic is a cousin of the tragic; it might induce compassion- for a situation or a condition as we find it.

The house on the Bellarine Peninsula is on a street corner, facing large flat paddocks. There was a desire to mark some public presence (if it can be called that) to the lost-looking houses nearby- like the way a clubroom next to an oval does, or a suburban sub-station does, or the flat-roofed shops of the towns main street shops do.

To do this, the building is pushed as close to the street as possible (3 metres), and stretched as long as possible (30 metre) on the site. There is very little breadth (4 metres) and only minimum height. In a 2800mm high building though, there is an inference of a second storey.

Howlett and Bailey’s courtyard houses abstract the second storey as a roof and here this idea is reduced to 900mm of extra broad fascia.

The long wall is made in gold, lightly patterned glazed bricks – a saturation of the cream bricks of Keysborough, of the houses everywhere built 30 or 40 years ago.

It faces west and casts it afternoon shadow over the site like a building which is bigger than itself.

A paling fence like those in the neighborhood forms a thin courtyard wall. To coerce the suggestion of a wall, and a courtyard, the front door is a gate in the fence, and the fence has a window facing the house.

Frank Gehry did a version of this in his own house, he also did vernacular strip windows in the 1970s- this house does a similar cheap version on its east side with Boral window echoed by glass over the studs.

The building might also be read as a very bemused re-working of Katsalidis’ beach house at St Andrews.

2002 appears on the west front 12 courses high in black and white brick. Marking a building with a date is associate for us with nineteenth century pediments- or 1980s versions of the same. Carving a date is equally reserved for a headstone- the smallest of architectural monuments. Writing anything into a wall suggests a desire to speak, or at least to be named. Labrouste tried to carve the encyclopedia of learning onto the Biblioteque St Genevieve- a gesture doomed to obsolescence. Here there is only a year, destined for being instantly dated.

From 1968, 2001 always seemed to be the future, thought of as it was, in the big round zeros of the film title. 2002 as an idea seemed mute, (even though attractively symmetrical) it seemed after the fact, a fact which didn’t eventuate properly.

For the moment, we are only interested in the moment.