“Sculpture allows you to deal with the world in a very direct way – with material, with mass, with gravity.” (Antony Gormley)

Opposite Bronte Gully, nestled into the hillside, this home for an artist’s family has been carved into the landscape with precision, distilling design to its essential expression. Sculpted celebrates raw materiality: structural brick walls and concrete slabs remain exposed as final surfaces, requiring meticulous detailing and workmanship.

Inspired by the owner’s ceramicist and timber works, we approached the home as a macro sculpture – interplaying with open air and sunlight against a backdrop of layered native foliage. This vision gave rise to our conceptual principle: a home with zero superfluous layers.

The absence of applied finishes and the use of locally made Krause bricks, concrete, and oak offer raw authenticity. The garage conceals a generously proportioned sculpture studio – a working retreat for artist Aaron Crothers, whose ceramic works feature throughout the house.

Sculpted achieves richness through reduction, revealing form by removing excess. By stripping away the unnecessary, it reveals a home where every surface tells the story of its making, where materiality speaks honestly, a dwelling inseparable from the landscape that holds it and the creative life it contains.

Photography: Anson Smart