NEW HOUSE The term “tabula rasa,” like many sayings from ancient languages, has evolved over time. Originally describing writing tablets that have been wiped clean, the expression now commonly evokes emptiness or a fresh start. The English philosopher John Locke, largely credited with popularizing the term in his text An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, intended to describe something other than emptiness: rather, a white sheet of paper, a symbol for the starting point of human understanding upon which experience is recorded and comprehension develops. For Moloney Architects, the idyllic setting for this project, 20 minutes from Ballarat, presented a conundrum: an apparently “empty” site that belied its long history.
Over its time, this 150-plus-year-old property has twice seen grand dwellings razed to the ground by bushfires, both times exposing the…