Dec 27, 2025
Located in the inland region of the Northern Rivers in NSW, The Field House is a dream garden home designed for a young family, brought to life by the owners themselves – contractor Henry Tervenski and interior designer Olive Cooke. Meticulously crafted and deeply personal, the house embodies an approach to rural life, where a slow pace of life and sensory connection guide every decision.
The result of close collaboration with Fraser Mudge Architects and Cooke Landscape Architecture, the house is designed with meticulously placed accents. An open central area creates a focal point for the layout, while two wings offer a tranquil separation – one for the family's private space and the other for guests. The material language is soft yet confident, shaped by textured surfaces, natural textures, and clear lines, prioritizing serenity over complexity.
This dream garden home was designed for a young family and was gradually completed during construction – an advantage as both the contractor and designer were also clients. Over 8,000 meters of speckled eucalyptus wood make up the exterior cladding, with details meticulously considered down to the straight lines of the ceilings and walls. Inside, concealed appliances, sliding doors, and built-in wardrobes ensure functionality is elegantly hidden within minimalist forms, while allowing the family to personalize each room over time.
Cooke's interior design aesthetic prioritizes warmth over formality. Cream-toned Japanese tiles, wooden vanity cabinets, and soft furnishings create a sophisticated and refined color palette, while thoughtful details—such as the wood-paneled bathtub and sink in the guest bathroom—add depth to everyday rituals. The result is a dream garden home designed for a young family, supporting both comfort and joy in daily life, allowing everyday tasks to be elevated through tactile and spatial considerations.
The surrounding landscape was shaped in parallel with the construction process, expanding beyond the initial vision to include a swimming pool, sauna, tennis court, and wellness space. These elements now blend seamlessly into the site, creating a space for family gatherings, play, and relaxation. Framed views and meticulously designed gardens help the house connect with its surroundings, enriching the sensory experience and reinforcing its connection to the site and climate.
Designed for a young family, this dream garden house marks the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of its owners. As Cooke and Tervenski welcomed their daughter into the home they built themselves, The Field House was more than just a project – it became the foundation for memories. With its restraint, exquisite craftsmanship, and quiet ambition, it offers a unique model of a good life, both in form and emotion.
Field House embodies a rare blend of personal storytelling and architectural sophistication. It's a dream garden home designed for a young family, not only blending seamlessly with the surrounding landscape but also listening to it. In doing so, it invites others to envision how homes can evolve alongside their inhabitants, fostering a sense of comfort, belonging, and enduring identity.
Our lives have definitely taken on a slower pace in the last sort of six to nine months.
It's been a really beautiful time to be at home and spend that time together. Sometimes we don't
leave, which is maybe a blessing and a curse, but it is so beautiful to spend that time together
and have a space to do it with each other and also our family and friends visiting.
Hi I'm Henry and I'm Olive and we are the owners and builders of Fieldhouse.
The Fieldhouse is situated on the outskirts of Byron Bay
on the Northern Rivers New South Wales North Coast.
From the outset our brief was pretty simple. We just wanted a family home that would support our
family growing as we've just had a daughter and also a place we can spend time with family and
friends. We gave this brief to Fraser Mudge who came up with a really beautiful design
that sat really softly sort of in its surrounds and gave us that beautiful open plan family home.
As you open the large glass sliding door to enter the home you're then in quite an open plan
living space where we have the kitchen that steps down into the living and the dining.
There's a beautiful daybed that you can lounge on. One of my favourite interior moments is the
custom curtain I have made using different panels of silk. It lets through really beautiful light in
the morning and then also in the afternoon and that movement creates quite a soft element to the
living and media room. The design of the kitchen is really minimal so we wanted to ensure you still
had that opportunity to hide your toaster and your kettle and all those things you don't want out on
display day to day. So we had the pocket doors designed that they can be fully open and tucked
back in or you can have that closed for a really seamless space. As you then move through the
property there's two wings to the house and to the right is the master and en suite which is
quite private and its own area that we use and spend a lot of time in. In both the en suite and
the guest bathroom we kept it really simple and minimal with a stunning Japanese tile. We used a
little bit more of a pinky kind of creamy hue for the en suite and then the cream of the guest
bathroom to keep it just calm and bright and light. And then to the left we have the guest
bedrooms and bathroom. This creates really beautiful separation between the space we use
and that of people visiting. It is unique to have the builder and the designer both as the client.
This means that you know there's definitely the function and the fun and both those elements come
into play. This also means as the building progresses and things evolve we can be really
adaptive and change and really look at the best way to come together. Building your own home
compared to a client home is such a different process. I still work closely with Fraser, Marge
the architect to design the architecture and nailed all the details which then me being the client and
the builder allowed me to build this house without the back and forth of getting approval from the
client. We would just have a weekly catch up which then allowed that to speed up the
building process. We wanted this house to be nestled in and feel like it has been here and lived in.
So the biggest challenge on this project was the exterior cladding. It worked out to be
8 000 linear meters of spotted gum. We put a lot of attention to detail in the cladding as we have
worked out the whole house to work out full boards everywhere and worked out the ceilings line
up with the walls which I think the cladding on this project is one of the main features.
For the interiors from the outset it wasn't so much about an era in time or some kind of design
structure it was more about a feeling and a sense of warmth and bringing those things together quite
naturally. I went for warmer timbers and different soft furnishings that kind of created more of a
home. One of my favorite interior moments for the home is in the guest bathroom where we used timbers
for both the built-in sinks and the top of the bath. I had these custom designed and I think
they came up really beautifully and created something a little different while creating
that warmth for the space. Once we got the house out of the ground and the build started progressing
we then worked closely with Olive's sister Effie Cook who is a landscape architect. We were really
fortunate with this block that we already had existing hedges on either side it gave it this
real private kind of feeling and the first thing we did when we bought the block a few years ago
was plant out that boundary. Those trees have grown given us that privacy from the front
row as well. We worked closely with Effie to choose natives and really beautiful
plants that would feel soft and really well established in a short period of time.
It feels like we've kind of been here for a lot longer than we have. We wanted the landscaping
to be really low maintenance and the plant choice was also really considered to bring
in native wildlife and have it feel really settled and at one with what's already here.
I feel like the landscape around the home is the thing that changed the most as we
progressed through the build. We had ideas for sort of a veggie patch or a pool area
and then that expanded to a sauna, a wellness sort of space and a tennis court. These things
weren't what we'd first envisioned for the space but they came along and ended up sitting really
beautifully in the surrounding areas. This house for us represents a new chapter. It's
sort of been the starting point to us starting a family which we've wanted for years and it's
finally happened as we've settled here together and had our daughter Paloma,
so I think it'll forever be a really special place.
