What we wanted to achieve when we started to build
Our Sabbath Home was
bring in the darkness, concrete, and —
Art... brutalism architecture into the coastal suburb.
We wanted to come here and really rock the boat,
bring something different to the neighbourhood,
a reflection of us.
I'm Tenielle Crawley. I'm Michael Crawley.
We're the owners of Valley Eyewear,
and we are sitting in our family home,
called Our Sabbath Home.
We've lived in Palm Beach for quite a long time.
We always made it our thing to reside in Palm Beach and raise a family here.
We designed the house around our love of brutalism, concrete, dark architecture.
We wanted to build something that was very us and everything that we both loved,
but also was very functional.
And something that wouldn't date.
I think that was probably something that was most important to us,
that it'll stand the test of time and it'll age beautifully,
obviously with the amount of concrete and the colour palette that we've chosen.
The hardest part about building a concrete and a black house is that we were
very conscious that we wanted the house to have the warmth.
So counteracting that, we really made sure we had a lot of greenery,
as you can see with the planter boxes, and the gardens,
and the infrastructure of the house to soften it,
the internal garden, and also to the lighting designs.
Our lighting designer, Ash Dowthwaite,
he's bounced a lot of light throughout the house.
Tenielle and myself, we'd like to think of ourselves as art collectors.
One of our really good friends is David Bromley.
We've got one of the largest David Bromley paintings that he's ever made,
which is in our living room.
So we've kind of looked at the house as an art gallery.
We had one of our really good friends, Lee Brennan Design.
He's a jewellery designer but also builds furniture.
He handcrafted our front door from 50-plus-year-old Indonesian teak wood.
So as you walk into the house, you're greeted by, like almost like a castle door,
and then you go into the left, we can see our bar area, which is very New York inspired.
So through the centre hallway,
which is all off-form concrete,
I think there's 27 tons of concrete in that centre wall.
Past the stairwell, you come to your left, which will be into our kitchen area,
into our dining,
and then to the right-hand side, you go into our living room.
The main things that we wanted to achieve in the build of Our Sabbath Home
was giving that whole resort feel.
As you approach the top of the staircase, you turn right and you go into our bedroom.
Our off-form feature behind that bed was really important to us.
At one point, we were going to cover it with art, but it's art in itself.
We've got a really beautiful, big, open ensuite.
It's got that hotel vibe as well, where the bath is in the middle.
We've got all the integrated sinks, and then it goes out to a beautiful outdoor balcony.
Again, it's bringing the outside inside but bringing the warmth to the bedroom,
and again, the shadows that you get and the sun study
that you can achieve up there through the day is really beautiful.
John Wilson, from Dust Temple, he's an architect.
His theory was that if we angled the walls into the bedroom, it was more inviting.
So as you walk into the bedrooms to the left,
there is quite a grand feature,
like you're walking into a hotel.
Again, it was really important for us that we built a home that was not going to show the age,
and we really feel that the gunmetal, it will always be —
It's very timeless.
... in trend,
Yeah, and I think it actually complements the black.
It was really important for us,
as we said, that there was a warmth to the home,
and everyone that comes here says that,
and we want our home to be their home as well
because we do have little children,
as they grow up and their friends come over,
and our friends and their family,
that they all feel that this is a second home to them.
So, it was very important for us.
It was really important.