Where Architects Live, John Wardle

The design of this house really does two things: it's a device for chasing the sunlight and establishing the sociability of the house around the movement of the sun through different times of the day and also seeking those very specific views down and along the coast. The house is situated in Anglesea. I spent much of my childhood here. I then, as a teenager, surfed along this coast, and it's been a place that I visited all my life. We owned a small house here that was half burnt, damaged, and teetered around and swayed in the breeze for many years until we demolished it to create this home. It's positioned right on the very edge of the landslip that commenced down on the coastal edge, with a remarkable cliff face full of the ochres that define the selection of brick as a material and this specific colouration of the terracotta. The colour and tonality of the house is part of that equation, as is the massing of the house where I really pushed all of the two-storey parts up into this coastal edge of the house to form the face of the house, being very much cliff-like. We have a long-term relationship with Krauss; they developed a technique of this torn brick. It came through an extruding machine, and every brick as a consequence is unique. The glaze here is applied to the raw clay. What I'm particularly pleased with is the variance of things that are totally unexpected. You sort of see the human hand at work too. It's less machine-made in its appearance, which is the truth of the material. As we come inside the house, we go to the Manetti family terracotta works in Greve in Chianti, just near Florence, where all of the floor and wall tiles were created.

Spatially, the house is like nothing I've ever designed before. It really is a massive void expressed by this single carved roof form that starts at the base of the dining room and elevates up through this smaller living space, really that feels like a perching point that's really just set to appreciate the view. The study is a really important place. It's a very reflective zone of the house. It imagines a certain form of sociability but also deep concentration. It's really focused on the desk that pushes out and hence pushes this beautiful tensile structure with the hand-knotted net out into the void and also that collection of objects from these rather ad hoc and informal archaeological digs that I've embarked upon.

You'll notice the house is full of things that express the travelling and various journeys Sue and I have made. There are paintings, a lot from friends, and then other collected work of young artists and other things that really just associate with the span of life and many of life's experiences. The things that I've designed—the items of furniture, the dining table, coffee tables, and other occasional pieces of furniture—also, for me, express relationships with the makers. Much work was done on the thermal performance of the house, both its insulation, the ratio of walls to windows in every elevation, but also then the operability of external blinds and shutter systems that would shut out the light and repeat at times or modify it to whatever degree. But as well as that, this massive central shutter gives the shade where we want it but also allows light, particularly at this time of the year, to come deep into the heart of the house. The main access out of the courtyard is actually through the kitchen. This massive slider opens up, and we leave either the dining or the sitting room and access through the kitchen to those external areas.

The house is a series of experiments, and after so much speculation and the extensive process of building, it's very often the unexpected things that give great pleasure, and the house is much moodier than I had imagined. Its deeper tonality, it's a really wonderful feeling of walking through the house and seeing those shifting forms of light that really were unexpected and deeply felt.