Hi I’m Rob Maughan, the owner of Maughan building company, and for the most part of my working life I’ve been building luxury homes. I grew up in the eastern wheat belt and of course I was running the family farm in my early 20’s. Although I’d travelled around Australia twice I had not travelled significantly abroad until 2014 where I had a bit of a break between projects. I flew into Rome, travelled through Tuscany, Paris and southern France, Spain and Portugal flying with Singapore airlines via Singapore.
It’s funny the things you remember, I actually remembered an old Elvis movie from my childhood where he was riding a scooter through Rome, I also remembered a comment that one of my TAFE lecturer’s said way back in my 20’s when I was undertaking my builder‘s registration, the comment was “when you’re out take notice of the detail of buildings and how they’re constructed” I can remember at the time thinking this was such a ridiculous comment, that I would be at a restaurant having dinner that I should start looking at architecture and how the building was constructed and the detail on how it was put together.
How wrong I was and how the years of being involved in building luxury homes what a fascination it would create. I can remember the first time I went to Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I was in that church for 5 hours marvelling at such an amazing creation, Anthony Gaudi was a truly amazing architect, whilst the structures he created are now quite old, they are quite contemporary in a lot of ways. Anthony Gaudi when he designed Sagrada Familia he wanted to give the impression that you are looking up into a canopy of trees.
I’ve tasted a lot of wines, I find myself thinking I can’t taste any of the hints of flavours described on the label, in fact similarly architects claims of an impression they’re trying to create are quite often lost on me too, but when you look up to the 60 meter soffit of Sagrada Familia you are looking up into a canopy of trees, it almost brings up the hairs on your neck because it’s such an amazing building. Not impressed yet? Well the works that were carried out by Gaudi was cut stone that locked in together a component of the principles of how an arch works. Still not impressed yet, Gaudi not only designed all his own projects, he engineered and built them.
The guy is a freak, a very very talented one. The construction of Sagrada Familia still continues today, the Spaniards are hoping for a completion date of 2026. I’m telling you right now that’s not going to happen. They have a team of engineers with the latest software, that at one time Gaudi did all by himself. If you are ever in Barcelona I recommend you visit Sagrada Familia it truly is an architectural wonder. This is what travel brings to me as a builder and inspiration of contemporary design I am forever standing in one of these amazing structures sometimes created 100’s of years before. It’s always fascinating to find out the history of these incredible structures, because there is always a story of how they have been created and what influence the next conqueror and that reign added.
Inadvertently my interest of architecture and travel has acted as inspiration for our home designs. My latest trip (No 4 now to Europe) we just returned from in January 2019, a little over 4 weeks away visiting Greece, Sicily, Germany, Poland, the Republic of Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungry. My two favourite cities from this trip was Athens, such a fantastic city so much history, the food is wonderful, the Acropolis museum is amazing – I mean really amazing. Also Budapest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect…the architecture is fantastic, the food is great and beer is cheaper than water!! So what is an Australian abroad to do than take advantage of such a dilemma.
Building luxury homes is quite challenging at times, especially custom built homes, if you can’t try to be the best at what you do, then why bother? For a lot of people that means biggest is best, I don’t share this opinion, it’s more that my clients suggest a roof top garden, I’m like yes this is possible in fact whilst on my travels in Europe I have seen many, maybe could I suggest we try this? On my last trip to Europe I took over 3000 photographs, “Not Selfies”. My poor girlfriend gets subjected to me taking a lot of photographs of architecture, timber windows, Balustrade, doors, roofs of every village or city they have something unique to offer.
Although Maughan Building Company has a reputation of designing and building some very modern homes, the more I travel the more the more information I collect the more inspiration for home designs and real appreciation for different styles of architecture and as crazy as this may seem they get weaved into the homes we build.
I’m Rob Maughan, director of Maughan Building Co, thank you for reading my blog
Rob