Opposites ATTRACT
Two of Australia’s most singular auteurs teamed up to create this harbourside home. The result is unexpected, thrilling and unlike anything else.
The architect and interior stylist behind this Lavender Bay home couldn’t be more aesthetically disparate if they tried. Where Neil Durbach of Sydney’s Durbach Block Jaggers Architects is known for dreaming up sparse yet sculptural forms, interior stylist, author and product designer Sibella Court — who also runs design emporium The Society Inc. — is a maximalist in every sense of the word.
“Everyone thought we were quite an unusual partnership,” says Court of their pairing. “It’s been really rewarding,” adds Durbach. “The mixture of the minimalism and the maximalism has sort of allowed this third aesthetic to develop. I think we’ve achieved together what neither of us could’ve done individually.”
It was the owner who thought to pair the two together. “She’s really interested in people, and I think she thought we’d get along on a personal level,” Court remarks. Fortuitously, they did — “like a house on fire” (a brave metaphor from the stylist, given she’s just finished putting the finishing touches on this new build). But this particular house is as sturdy as they come. Built from sandstone and basalt, it appears almost monolithic from the road.
“We wanted it to look like this almost-solid cube of stone, but then inside, it feels as if water has been percolating through the structure, eroding it organically,” explains Durbach. “Then floating above that is this friendly shadow of a roof, which we wanted to feel like a cloud.”
If the architect’s poetic description doesn’t hammer it home, this Sydney residence is, for want of a better word (because no word feels quite capable of encapsulating the sheer beauty of this place), spectacular. A four-storey structure layered with garden terraces that overflow with predominantly native foliage, it’s a once-in-a-decade (or once-in-a-lifetime) type of ››