Night Sky House

Whilst most houses are designed with views of the ocean or countryside in mind, you might be able to guess the main focal point of Night Sky House from Peter Stutchbury Architecture. This great piece of modern design is located in Blackheath, Australia, and recently won the highest residential award for architecture in Australia – The Robin Boyd Award 2021.

It’s difficult to narrow down the aesthetic of Night Sky House and it feels both ancient and contemporary at the same time. The references are so diverse that it feels like a church, a castle, a railway arch, and a middle eastern grain store all rolled into one. The client was inspired by a 19th-century ammunition bunker he encountered in Romania built of raw brick with arches. The architect references work by Le Corbusier in India.

The main architectural design element is the parabolic vaulted ceiling, a self-supporting structure crafted from recycled bricks with a 3.5m long by 2.5m wide elliptical retractable skylight that is unglazed and tilted 20 degrees to the south to get some mesmerising views of the stars at night.

Leo Davie