Daylesford Longhouse

A single 110-metre shed holds a house, a cooking school and a working farm under one long roof, on a rise looking out over Daylesford, Hepburn Springs and Mount Franklin. Designed by Partners Hill and completed in 2019, the Longhouse won that year's Australian House of the Year and the Robin Boyd Award, praised for treating agriculture and architecture as a single continuous idea rather than two separate briefs. Guests take the whole living quarters — furnished bedrooms, a working kitchen, a sauna, a clawfoot bath and an outdoor bathroom — sleeping up to four, with a minimum two-night stay. Farm tours run through the property's water-harvesting and composting systems and its animals, and the greenhouse-like form lets weather and light move through the building in a way a conventional farmhouse would shut out. It has been written up as much for its ideas about sustainable rural living as for how it looks, and staying there means living inside that argument for a couple of days.