Paper House by Crosson Architects, with Phoebe and Clem Devine

Prospect House by MAUD and at.space

What happens when you take excellent architects and give them thoughtful, knowledgeable clients? In the best cases, you get some particularly interesting housing. For our last Open Home event of 2024, we're dropping in on two recent favourite new houses. They're very different, but both perfectly realised – thanks to trusting and collaborative relationships between designer clients and architects.

First up? Paper House by Crosson Architects in the suburb of Westmere. Working closely with their designer clients – Clem and Phoebe Devine – Jerome Buckwell and Ken Crosson have devised an elegant house on a subdivided site with conflicting and tight boundary restrictions. But the steeply pitched roof is more than a response to planning controls: it gives the house a big volume on a small footprint, as well as dynamic, even church-like spaces from the very tall stud. Crosson and Buckwell deliberately designed the house in such a way that the Devines could have input: devising the pattern to the screen on the front, developing a singular paint colour – and adding an excellent collection of furniture and art.

Second, you might recognise Prospect House from the cover of Here issue 25. On a wide, flat "battle-axe" block, architect Natasha Markham of MAUD and interior designer Alex McLeod of at.space worked for close to a decade to design a house for McLeod and her family. Working with memories of a family mid-century house, and capturing light and sun via courtyards and galleries, it's a house that feels perfectly resolved and yet completely effortless. Hard-working and expansive, it's a terrific backdrop for art and furniture.