Casa Bottega / Chris Briffa Architects

As an architect, designing your home is a labour of love, with all the permutations that love brings with it; obsessing, re-designing, evaluating possible solutions, costing, and realisation of vision. After purchasing the property, budget was lacking, and subsequently the first phase involved restoring the building to its original design, save a giant skylight in the sala nobile. While the lower levels embrace the existing structure and features such as tiles, apertures and textures, the penthouse is a contemporary counterpart, defined by contrasts between soft and hard materials, light and shade, solids and voids.