The Outdoor Fireplace at Murrurundi by Michael Reid OAM

For this month’s edition of The Argus, Michael Reid OAM reveals the blueprint for the heart – and hearth – of the gardens at Murrurundi: the sleek, sculptural and seamlessly engineered outdoor fireplace that connects our gallery to the Concept Store and historic Bobadil House, wrapping our leafy courtyard like a warm embrace.

I generally say, “Please do.” After all, it’s all a bit humorous really — catching yet another deeply original starchitect or landscape designer mid-snap, well down the path of meticulously photographing my cantilevered outdoor fireplace at Murrurundi. Some even bring tape measures — and their builders — as if subtlety were optional when it comes to design theft.

I roll my eyes but don’t make a fuss. In my world, it was Pablo Picasso — the great artist, though let’s be frank, a deeply flawed man — who said, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Not one to contradict a master — and fully expecting my fireplace design to have already popped up across the nation — I’ve decided to put it all out there. Because, let’s face it, the stealers are bound to run amok with my intellectual property anyway.

The architect William Zuccon, the firm Elegant Engineering, and I designed one kick-ass outdoor fireplace — all hearth, part dining table, part party bar, and part children’s adventure playground. Between what was originally a convict cell block, circa 1842 — at Bobadil House, Murrurundi, and now my Concept Store — and the new art gallery, built in 2017 and again co-designed by William Zuccon, lies a gravel courtyard.

I wanted an outdoor fireplace to bookend that courtyard, with a large pergola now flowering opposite.
In winter, the hearth slows people down as they gather around flickering flames and embers — think parked male, while the on-shopping partner continues to browse.

Stretching a commanding 5.8 metres, the design anchors itself around a stone-clad hearth, from which a 3.15-metre cantilevered concrete bench extends to the left before wrapping lightly around the back and right side. This gentle continuation softens the geometry, creates balance, and offers a practical nook for firewood — an elegant interplay of function and form.

At its heart, the firebox — 1200 mm wide by 750 mm high — is proportioned to the Golden Mean, ensuring the entire composition feels intuitively harmonious. Structurally, the piece is a triumph of balance.

The 220 mm-thick bench, hollowed beneath to reduce weight, is formed from high-strength 50 MPa concrete, reinforced with N16 bars and pre-cambered to counteract deflection over time.

Elegant Engineering’s drawings reveal the hidden choreography beneath the surface: offset footings resisting rotational forces, piers and reinforcement cores absorbing stress — all so the bench appears to float, effortless and assured.

Seen in person, the fireplace reads as both sculpture and purpose. The concrete’s soft, milky-grey patina catches changing light, its simplicity giving it presence without pretension. The mass of the tower and the precision of the cantilever strike a calm tension — a balance of geometry, gravity and grace.

The result is both hearth and sculpture — an object that radiates warmth, proportion and personality. In its restrained palette and deliberate geometry, this Murrurundi fireplace becomes not just a place to gather, but a statement of how architecture can find quiet strength in structure. And it’s now out there.

Michael Reid OAM