Custom Build on a Compact Perth Block: Thoughtful Design, Timeless Form
This custom-built home on a compact inner-city block is a celebration of spatial thinking, restraint, and high-impact design. Built on an unusually shaped 170m² lot, the home sits within a dense urban context that presented several challenges — including restricted natural light on two sides, tight setbacks, and the need to create both privacy and openness within a small footprint.
Designed in close collaboration with the client and architectural designer Dr. Jack Tooley, this home reflects a deeply considered approach. From the very beginning, the design process centred on client-led imagery, mood references, and experiential intentions rather than purely aesthetic trends. The result is a 215m² home that feels generous, coherent, and purposefully composed.
A Reversed Layout for Light and Liveability
To maximise the available light and create a sense of escape from the density of its surrounds, the home was designed with a reverse-living layout.
The ground floor accommodates three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a powder room, laundry, and a compact study nook tucked beneath the stairs. These spaces were designed to be functional and calm, with clean lines and subtle detailing. Integrated storage and warm materials help the smaller spaces feel anchored and intentional.
Rising from the centre of the home is a custom stair balustrade, crafted from laser-cut, powder-coated steel mesh. Far more than a safety element, it serves as a semi-permeable membrane — creating filtered transparency that connects the lower and upper levels while introducing light, texture, and rhythm to the stair void.
An Upper Floor Framed by Light and Intent
The upper level contains the kitchen, dining, and living zones, brought together beneath a series of raking ceilings. These soaring lines do more than just elevate the space — they draw light in from above and create a sense of volume and openness that belies the home’s modest footprint.
Colour and material choices throughout the home were treated as an opportunity to create cohesion. Walls and ceilings are finished in the same muted tone, while surfaces shift softly from one material to the next. This approach, described by Dr. Jack Tooley as a form of “encapsulation,” results in a space that is visually quiet, immersive, and texturally rich.
The main bedroom cabinetry features stone handles, while brass tapware appears throughout the wet areas, offering both warmth and subtle contrast. In the bathrooms and laundry, large-format tiles stretch seamlessly across the floors and walls, enhancing the sense of scale and calm.
A Terrace That Blends Light, Shade, and Texture
The upper floor opens onto a first-floor terrace, a private outdoor room that connects directly to the living space through full-height bi-fold glass doors. Wrapped in hit-and-miss brickwork, the terrace creates a dappled transition between indoors and out. This element allows filtered light and airflow while softening the home’s exterior presence with pattern and shadow.
A hidden powder room is also neatly tucked behind a concealed door upstairs, preserving the clean flow of the open-plan space.
Exterior Layers With Purpose
Externally, the home combines NewTechWood castellated cladding and Scyon Axon cladding, creating a layered, linear aesthetic with lasting durability. These materials, chosen for both performance and visual clarity, allow the building to express its geometry without overpowering its surroundings.
Brickwork with colour-matched mortar further enhances the monolithic, textural quality of the home’s base — grounding the form while tying into the internal rhythm of materials and detailing.
A Personal Project With Architectural Clarity
This home was the product of a rich, collaborative process between builder and client. Designed by Dr. Jack Tooley, it reflects not just a response to site conditions, but also an intentional, personal exploration of space, tone, light, and experience. The result is a home that is refined without being showy, layered without being loud, and entirely custom in its execution.
Built by Create Homes, it’s a powerful example of what can be achieved on a constrained block when vision and craftsmanship work hand in hand.
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