Well the house itself probably represents the entire life of our family. We came
here as a young couple. The house seemed utterly exhausted after the rearing of
three teenage kids here and it really just needed to have modern standards.
The mercuriality is relatively singular but the use of things is quite variant.
The ceramic tiles are quite a feature of so many parts of the house but what's interesting is you
use the tiles as sort of a measure. The whole room is proportioned exactly to the module of the tile.
When I see many things that I have designed around the house, the pleasure I have is the back story.
A tea table in the front room, there's a play on a vase that I bought as a student. A jewellery box I
designed as a present for Susan has legs that sort of refer back to the Gio Ponti Superleggera chair.
There's so many things that I think have little stories of my experiences or appreciations or
understandings that then characterise the nature of rooms within a house, creating a whole.
And so I think we are in an era where
there's a greater fascination in things being customised especially for a project.
This house itself, the original part of it, not that much left, was actually built in 1951 in what
was a horse paddock. The building itself attracted us, we drove past thought it looked very unloved
it wasn't for sale and we kidded the absent owner to sell it to us many years ago in 1990. As much
as anything I think we saw the house and then immediately turned around and looked backwards
and realised it was an amazing vantage point back across the Yarra and the city, but also the
attraction was the garden, beautiful garden, set within the structure of three massive elm trees.
We had to sort of negotiate with the advice of an arborist the territory between the canopies
and root zones of these two trees, so it's very much a house sit within a landscape.
Taking on a tour of the house really we start at the street level and look up to see something
which was a complete addition to the original house. We sliced the front of the old house back
in 1999 and created a whole new wing that sits between two elm trees and the whole
pattern and shape is all about the elm trees. Into the house itself, the elms are a fascination and
the house sits centrally within a garden so at each phase of the development of the house
the idea of creating these new apertures and windows out has been a constant fascination.
I'm always fascinated in the cultural aspects around the making of something.
The back stories, the place it's made, the era with which it was designed.
I am fascinated with Japanese artefact because just about always it expresses a high degree of
purposefulness. The act of eating a meal or taking tea or drinking sake is so symbolic and
its value so stated in the object of a tea cup or a sake glass. Intense treatment of what might be a
brutally simple form is something that I think is specifically Japanese.
Artedomus supplied an amazing mix of products here.
This project came from, I suppose, meeting John about four years ago.
He'd just returned from a trip to Japan where funnily enough he had been walking through
Tokonami, which is where the Inax tile brand began. He has an amazing interest in materials.
This led to him understanding what we could offer to his idea behind what he wants to create.
The kitchen has on the wall a scalloped tile from the Tajimi Valley which is another special place
in Japan known for producing beautiful ceramics. On the bench top in the kitchen is a 12 millimetre
thick natural stone, quartzite bench top which has been built into the kitchen to enhance its
thin profile. The next room downstairs which is probably the most outstanding has been nicknamed
the bamboo forest room. It came from, well it's not even a factory, it's a woman in Tajimi who
is a ceramic artist and she produces out of one little kiln adjacent to her house and that tile
was originally used on the outside of her house and produced about 30 years ago, so for her to
reproduce that for this little room was quite a feat, even for a woman with such talent. Also in
that room is the Angelo Mangiarotti Agape Pedestal Basin, an absolute design classic. Above it is
the solid mirror which is hollow glass designed by the architect Diego van Carter, made by a
guy in Murano. He blows it into a ball and then flattens it into a thick almost saucer-like shape.
Upstairs, the master bathroom or the ensuite is a wonderful combination of
Agape and custom tiles from Inax. The Agape Nivis Basins have a form that's like fallen snow. It
lends itself really nicely to the Cristalplant bath. This house, it's ended up being I think,
the most rewarding project i've ever been involved in in my career.
I'm very proud of what Artedomus did and I truly appreciate the way John embraced our offerings.
Look, i've always been fascinated by the seasonality that a house adjusts to. The
means of drawing light into internal space. The altitude of the sun at different times
of the day. It's very rare to have a house without actually some kind of ceiling lighting.
I like the idea that things are indirect and often the light source at certain times can be obscured
because then it's the effect of light rather than the source of light that is of so much interest.
It's so intricate, it's so unusual. No doubt this house will be a museum piece
in years to come. It expresses so many aspects of identity.