“I find it’s more the sense of consideration, cohesiveness and connection to storytelling that makes my projects recognisable, rather than any one style” – Tenille

Any new favourite materials? Rammed concrete (RSE by PSE @perth_stablised_earth) is my new all-time favourite… I have fallen deeply in love with the tactility and beauty of this material. It’s also around one-third the price of off-form concrete. I have also developed a new obsession with face brickwork and the endless possibilities bricks can offer architecturally when you play with colour, texture, lay pattern and mortar joint style. We are doing raked horizontals and flush perks (yes, it’s a real thing) to accentuate the horizontal rock banding of Karijini.

Any learnings around them? Any design project offers endless lessons. I had not worked with RSE prior to Karijini House, so have leaned heavily on Alan from PSE to teach me the limitations of the material and building techniques. For example, minimum thicknesses, the oxide/custom colour process and how sensitive this is. It took us 12 rounds of samples to land on the perfect colour, adjusting four to six percent and playing with a mix of black and walnut and white or yellow sand.

How have you approached the sustainability aspect of design and what has been your response to environmental responsibility? We would have loved to be early-adopters of passive house design principles, but unfortunately our design was too far progressed by the time we engaged with this as a sustainability concept. Despite not being able to create a home free of air-conditioning through the use of thermal breaks, we have attempted to maximise access to natural light and create natural breezeways wherever possible to limit our demand on mechanical cooling and heating. Apart from these, the materials we have selected have a high re-use and recycled content. The rammed walls are made from recycled concrete sourced around Perth from demolition sites, and the bricks we have chosen for the primary face brick are an ex-stock discontinued range which would otherwise be going to landfill. These are two primary building materials for the home, so apart from a fast few fastwall brick walls and our concrete slabs, most core structure materials are highly sustainable with no new manufacturing and transport footprint. Our lighting and cooling system will be inherently smart with motion sensors and mobile app controls to limit any time on while not in use. We also intentionally chose a block where we could retain the existing features (a beautiful granite retaining wall) and no demolition, minimising our contribution to landfill.

Can you tell us about your palette? Our palette is focused just as much on texture and tactility as colour. The experience of Karijini when you are buried deep in a gorge is one of darker tones with everything basked in shadow, dewy from a waterfall or natural spring, and framed on all sides by greenery and carved iron rockface. Our bricks are a dark walnut brown with matching mortar.

The RSE walls have a mix of black and walnut oxide to add warmth and the concrete slabs (with visible slab edges to the entire top floor) will be a warm brown coloured concrete. All of our doors, door frames, joinery and natural stone is a dark, almost black-brown, tone, and the window package and key lighting fixtures will be finished in a beautiful matte anodised bronze. We wanted this sense of dark dampness engulfed in greenery, but with a dark and rich warm iron undertone punctuating throughout. The upper floor will be lighter and brighter, which relates to the experience of climbing up out of the gorge into daylight.

Last question about your home: what was the feeling you wanted to create through the design and materials, and how did you approach that? Shortly after we purchased the block of land in Wembley Downs, Jimmy and I took off for a month to sleep in our car and explore Karijini and the North West with our little dashy Django. That time in our lives was pre-children and we were very career focussed and intense, both socially and professionally. We both revelled in the tranquillity and peace we found in Karijini – unplugged, calm and grounded. We came home with the wish to recreate that experience of serenity in the home we were about to embark on designing. Karijini House was born. Ultimately, we wanted a home that felt removed from everything, secret and private and unassuming on arrival, so as you entered (like climbing down into a gorge) it revealed tremendous imperfect beauty with a sense of dramatic scale, all framed by native greenery and inviting watering holes. The narrative is about emulating the experience and the feeling, so while we borrowed from the visual palette, that wasn’t a primary design driver. The home shouldn’t feel new, but like an ancient rockface that has weathered the test of time and many seasons that carved it from the earth. Similar to the concept of wabi-sabi, which is a Japanese term that essentially means finding beauty in imperfection. A wabi-sabi home is one that embraces authenticity, finds value in the lovingly weathered and lived-in, and promotes an overall sense of peace and tranquillity using simplicity. It’s been a long journey with lots of change and refinement, continually questioning each decision (even still) and not being afraid to admit when we got it wrong or could do better. The final outcome couldn’t be better suited to us, our family and ultimately our vision and dream.

What gets you most excited about design? The ability to improve and elevate the day-to-day experiences in body and mind when we interact with space and objects excites me the most about design. I don’t think I can overstate the importance I personally place on how our homes, workplaces and places of exercise and fun can impact our mental state. It is of the utmost importance in my life to make any space I spend time in as enjoyable and free from suffering as possible (eg reducing visual clutter and mess, making the space intuitive to use), and I strive for this with any space I design. Design is all around us everyday and we can make a choice to improve every single touchpoint in our lives by questioning '“why”. I often found myself wondering, who came up with the font and exact colours of our road signage as I drive around – I never take any decision about the mundane for granted. I am also a strong believer in practicing and living what you preach, and I have embodied this with all the homes I have designed with my husband Jimmy (this is our third home) and the places I have worked (I have been involved with the reimaging of the design studios I have worked in, being MKDC and Woods Bagot). There’s a great TED Talk podcast on the importance of design in the everyday . And as my favourite mentor Jordan Peterson says, “clean up your room”. It’s a great metaphor for first displaying your own competence locally, managing what you can actually control, before championing larger causes predominantly out of reach.

Fast facts.

Getting personal.