'A collector’s item': The team behind The Calile Hotel designed this rare gem for sale

Richards and Spence don’t do family houses … if they can help it. The celebrated Brisbane architect studio – of Adrian Spence and Ingrid Richards – is better renowned for its hospitality, retail and civic design work.

No better example is The Calile Hotel – which opened in 2018 – arguably the jewel in the couple’s portfolio.

Which makes this two-storey house in the leafy inner-city Brisbane suburb of Clayfield a rare gem. The house, completed in 2011, was the then-fledging studio’s first standalone residence, which they designed for an associate.

More than that, the project provided an opportunity to put into practice some of the design principles that now distinguish Richards and Spence’s architecture.

“It was attractive to us because we could test our ideas in a relatively short timeframe,” says principal Spence, pointing out that their commercial work can stretch to five or so years.

One of the first things you notice is that the Clayfield house eschews conventional town planning by avoiding traditional front and back yards.

Instead, Richards and Spence push the house’s footprint “to the edges” alongside boundaries to take advantage of the narrow suburban block.

“We do it so we can grab the outdoor space and use it in how one experiences the house,” Spence says.

As a result, all the key communal spaces – the kitchen, living and dining rooms, and a travertine-tiled entertaining terrace with pool – are organised around a spacious grassed courtyard wide open to the sky.

Importantly, this setup offers privacy from neighbours while flooding the main rooms with natural light and ventilating the interiors.

It also creates a focus for people circulating in and out of variously sized rooms, a common feature in Richards and Spence’s commercial work, where social interaction, shared daily routine, and community are vital elements: how they design space applies equally, whether it’s a house, shop, restaurant or hotel.

Spence explains the central courtyard has become a recurring theme for their studio. “We’ve prioritised that even over the interior rooms,” he indicates. “And that’s true of all our residential work.”

You only need to look as far as the couple’s own glorious residence, La Scala – completed in 2020 – to see this same inversion, where the outdoors take charge.

Materially minimalist, the interiors use lightly coloured concrete block and stonework, which – with brickwork – are also common to the studio’s other projects.

Traditional shiplap timber and tin construction are only employed on the outside to fulfil town-planning requirements. Working with these same planning controls, the architects also created a modest front facade in keeping with the appearance of traditional Queenslanders.

At the same time, the interiors assume a grander scale, featuring parallel double-height blockwork walls running full-length of the property and central hallway.

This establishes voids over the media lounge and living rooms, around which four bedrooms and a lounge are arranged upstairs.

Spence says it’s wrong to think lightweight buildings – like the “less comfy” timber-and-tin Queenslander – are better suited to hot climates than concrete and masonry.

The couple was inspired by the Majorca house made from local limestone of Danish architect Jørn Utzon (best known for designing the Sydney Opera House), who “conceived it as a bit of a ruin”. “It’s one of the ideas we tested in Milne Street,” explains Spence.

For example, window frames are fixed on the outside of the blockwork walls, so you aren’t aware of the glazing.

Again, it’s an idea the studio has explored in other celebrated design projects, notably The Calile Hotel and La Scala (there’s ivy growing on the inside walls), and continues to in other houses they’re working on for likeminded clients in the owner of The Calile and Brisbane restaurateur Frank Li.

“A building from concrete and masonry holds the landscape,” argues Spence. “It combines with your experience in the way you’d imagine it happening in a ruin.”

SOLD - $4,100,000

8 Milne Street, Clayfield QLD 4011

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“This is definitely a collector’s item on Queensland’s architectural scene. Richards and Spence are not only celebrated locally but internationally. It’s an opportunity to own a house that’s truly wonderful,” says agent Heath Williams of Place Estate Agents New Farm.