A family of five, a steep harbour-edge block, and a single instruction from the architect: let the sandstone do the talking.
House Wentworth sits on a fall of nearly nine metres above the water. The architect's scheme buried the entry in the cliff and opened the living level to the north, so the house reads as a single quiet plane of stone and glass from the harbour.
Our work was to make that calm possible — the structural gymnastics, the hand-set stone, the joinery that hides every service. The result is a home that looks effortless precisely because nothing about it was.
The eastern suburbs sit on ancient sandstone — a substrate that demands respect. Coastal wind, salt air and a nine-metre fall made conventional construction impossible. Every material choice deferred to the geology: hand-cut stone coursework, bronze fixings that weather, and glass held in deep reveals to shade the northern sun.
Hale & Orr Architects drew a house that buries its entry in the cliff and opens the living level to the north. Our role was pre-construction consultancy — pressure-testing every detail for buildability before a single footing was poured — then delivering the concept without compromise.
The joinery wall in the kitchen, the board-formed concrete retaining structure, and the cantilevered stone terrace each required months of prototyping at our bench before appearing on site.
A single dedicated crew — master carpenter, stonemason and finishing team — who have worked together for over a decade. Weekly notes, no surprises. The client walked the site any time they wished.
The slow final months — the joinery, the stone, the light. The work that separates a house from a home.
They built our house the way you'd hope someone would — quietly, exactly, and as though it mattered to them as much as it did to us.
House Wentworth was completed in 2024 — a sandstone-and-glass residence that reads as quiet inevitability from the harbour. The structural gymnastics, the hand-set stone, the hidden services: all dissolve into a home that holds light, weather and time.
The Practice
A builder small enough to care, deep enough to deliver. Sixteen years, fewer than seventy houses — led by founder and master builder Elias Marchetti, with a core team that has stayed together for more than a decade.
More Work
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