Equinox House is a home in perfect equilibrium. Set within a world-class equestrian estate, the home and estate are an exemplar of balance, precision and quiet grandeur.
In partnership with Elton Group.
Drawing from the celestial symbolism of its namesake, Equinox House is aligned to the east–west axis, designed to engage in an ever-changing dance with light. As the sun arcs overhead, shafts of light move through the structure’s brutalist concrete frame, giving the home a temporal rhythm—a kind of living sundial in built form.
The project is shaped as much by the land as by the client brief. Patricia and James Stewart, founding partners of Stewart + Stewart, have embraced the surrounding rural vernacular. The intention being to “create a dialogue between land, material and tradition,” they share. As such, Equinox House is monumental yet human in scale, referencing barn structures while being executed with extraordinary material finesse.
Outside, the building is clad in reclaimed and blackened Australian hardwoods, establishing a design language that offers a sense of monastic minimalism. The same narrative is extended throughout the interiors, with a rich palette of natural materials: saddle leather, heritage textiles, raw stone and dark-toned timber veneers by Elton Group. Each element has been chosen for its tactility and performance. “It is an architectural paradox – brutalist yet warm, immense yet inviting, precise yet soulful. Every surface, texture and junction were selected to elicit a sensory response and a feeling of grounded elegance and quiet luxury,” Patricia and James note.
Despite its scale—over 1,000 square metres—Equinox House maintains an atmosphere of calm and cohesion through precise spatial planning and layered materiality. A trapezoidal staircase rises to a cloistered parent’s retreat, while generous communal spaces flow across intersecting grids, designed to host both quiet family life and large-scale entertaining.
A sunken lounge is surrounded by bespoke joinery, all clad in Elton Group’s Eveneer Raw in Ravenna. The dark tones bring the ebony-coloured external language through to the interiors.
Joinery throughout the home is extensive, all highly refined and detailed to fit like a glove. By integrating a series of dark timbers, and timber veneers by Elton Group, the outcome is cohesive and elegant.
A hand-finished bronze gridwork detail intersects the Eveneer joinery, repeating the axial motif.
At the heart of the interiors is a suite of custom joinery pieces that speak to the home’s architectural intent. From a sunken leather lounge and a library framed by aged bronze to six-metre pivoting doors, the joinery is integrated into the building’s spatial flow. “Joinery in Equinox House is treated as architecture in its own right: sculptural, purposeful, and deeply embedded in the spatial logic. It was essential that each custom piece contributes to both the functionality of the home and its overall material integrity and sense of rhythm,” the designers explain.
Integral to this layered approach is the use of Eveneer Raw in Ravenna by Elton Group, applied across joinery, wall cladding, doors, and entry portals. Its tonal warmth softens the more austere materials, giving the home a tactile repetition. “We were drawn to Eveneer Ravenna for its exquisite texture and colouration, as well as the way it wraps a space with quiet confidence that achieves visual harmony. This veneer threads through the entire home…creating a subtle rhythm that anchors each room while allowing other materials, such as natural stone and aged metals, to sit in conversation with it,” Patricia and James note.
To create continuity elsewhere, the designers specified Elton Group’s Eveneer Woodwall, also in Ravenna. The unique veneer wall covering, which is applied like wallpaper, features on the ceilings within the main bedroom suite entry and in the study. This combination of timber finishes— from solids, to veneers and wall coverings—all work together to infuse the spaces with a highly resolved design voice.
Equinox House achieves the rare feat of feeling both grounded and transcendent. With its precise detailing and elemental materiality, it is a house to enrapture the senses.
Elements of brutalism peek through, not just in the architectural forms, but also in the furniture selections, with structural solid pieces such as 101 Copenhagen Brutus lounge chairs and coffee tables that sit confidently alongside the floor-to-ceiling timber veneer joinery.
Eveneer Ravenna, with its soft planked pattern and tonal generously and meticulously detailed by Stewart, softens the brutalist austerity and scale.
The sleek joinery is complemented by streamlined Blum LEGRABOX drawers in the kitchen.
Moody and dark, the designers have embraced the fact the house sits on an equestrian estate, introducing saddle leathers and richly textured materials.
Vitrocsa’s streamlined Pivot and Sliding windows are integrated throughout Equinox House.
“Every surface, texture and junction were selected to elicit a sensory response and a feeling of grounded elegance and quiet luxury.”
– patricia stewart
The architectural response at Equinox House embraces the rural vernacular with striking barn-like structures.
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