Jo Stanley

“I don’t like how consumerist we are and how we have this attitude that we can do whatever we like. I believe in owning up and taking responsibility, but it’s not just about the environment it’s about the community and how we live and contribute in a positive way and how this affects other people and ultimately the planet. Having said that, I will need a room just for my shoes!”

Talk of shoes has calmed Miss Stanley, the daredevil disc jockey at FOX FM, who lost her mobile on the beach walking to the interview (a grave misstep considering that’s her lifeline to tenor Anthony Callea, her partner on Channel 7’s ‘It Takes Two’, a partnership that would eventually earn them runner-up). “I have 150 shoes,” she says. “I love stilettos, the higher the better, but I’m mad for flat shoes as well.” “A room for Imelda!” exclaims Archicentre architect Michael Ellis, who is taking Jo’s brief. Jo laughs and anxiously checks outside the café to make sure Scout her gorgeous 10 month-old Vanilla Lab is still tied up.

For the interior layout, Jo wants large, flexible spaces that can be made private. “I like open plans, but I also like a clear divide between the hanging out area and a more formal environment. At the moment my formal room doubles as my husband’s TV room but I would take the TV out in a second if I had half the chance.”
“So large spaces, able to be partitioned with a nice, sitting space,” Ellis notes.
“A nice sitting space, yes, but nothing too stuffy. I want a room that is clean and tidy and still have my nice things in it. It’s where I would go to read a book. Something like a salon.”

Over the next ten minutes, an enthusiastic discourse unfolds between client and architect about the salon and its potentialities: a colour scheme decorated in burgundy with pink champagne accents, a feature wall dedicated to one of Florence Broadhurst’s vaguely Oriental 70s wall patterns; furnishings, some of which they already have (art deco armchairs, Indian hand-woven rug) and others they dream about (deep-sinking couches) as well as the room’s uses (reading, socialising, entertaining). The focal point of the salon will be a grand piano. “I learned piano for thirteen years but I haven’t played for oh gosh, twelve years but I dream of playing again,” Jo says.

Jo met her husband Darren at RMIT. He was doing his PHD and auditioned for a show she was producing. He works in Film and TV and has a DVD collection that is, according to Jo, “so much worse than my shoes.” If they watch anything together it’s Lost, Footy (Collingwood diehards) or DVD favs like Little Miss Sunshine. “My husband needs a home entertainment area. I’m not interested in that, but he will need a place he can go to watch his freaking DVDs and get out of my hair!”

 “We need a home cinema and let’s suppose there is a room off that for these figurines he collects: Simpsons figurines, Star Wars figures and other vintage toys he’s been collecting ever since he was a little boy. He’s got an original Steve Austin and a Boy George that are still in mint condition in their original boxes.” Does he want to display this sort of stuff? “I don’t want it displayed. He needs a room where he can go and play and he’ll take people down to show them. He does this thing, now this totally cracks me up, a lot of the Simpsons’ dolls they say stuff and one of them is a Barney that you press a button and he burps. Now if Darren’s walking past he’ll press the button and laugh as if he has never heard it before.” She shakes her head.

“What about the kitchen?” asks Ellis. “Do you like to cook?” “Oh I love to cook,” she says. “I want a kick-ass six burner stovetop and a kick-ass oven that can hold like two roasts and lots of veggies. I’m a bit of a roaster. I’m not keen on separate dining rooms where one person is in the kitchen and people are in the other room having fun. I want it integrated. And when we have our parties I’ll have my decks to DJ and the party can flow out to the decking outside.”

A week or so later, Ellis comes back with an Archicentre design concept of a semi-modern beach mansion with art deco details. Out front is a circular tower of compressed fibre sheet with an “all-observing eye” in the study that overlooks the front porch.

Augmenting Jo and Darren’s master bedroom is an en suite and walk-in-robe featuring a shoe cupboard with 200 capacity.

“When guests arrive they get punted right downstairs to the basement cinema for their movie nights,” says Ellis. Downstairs Darren gets his dream: a cinema and a collection for all his collectibles. Adds Ellis: “There is even a sliding door to quarantine visitors off from the quiet part of the house.”

“The wiggle wall in the passage is just some odd dynamic referencing Jo’s love of art deco.”

The other three bedrooms get en suites too, but also beach views. Bedroom 2 and 3 would suit young people (notice the gym and study area) while bedroom 4 makes a cosy guestroom.

The north-side living area with the bank of media is for kids, and up a short flight of steps on the other side of the wall is the casual family area. 

The kitchen and family area frame the dining table with its impressive indoor/outdoor extension — a secret weapon to bust out for the long lunch.  Meanwhile Ellis locates the champagne and meat fridge in the laundry most convenient to the BBQ in the SW corner.

From an environmental standpoint, Ellis provides two, rainwater tanks on the SW side and clads the rear extension in reclaimed yellow stringy bark and translucent fibreglass sheeting that will have the effect of diffusing the hot Australian summer.

“Orientation-wise, a house like this house would be ideally located in Seaford between the highway and the beach, on a terraced site sloping to the rear, the beach their new backyard,” says Ellis.

“I really see this house as having a front and a back where the front takes care of the practical matters like parking, entering and sleeping with a strong visual identity on the street. Once inside and through the passage it opens up, in a real physical sense, presenting ways to savour the location and get on with entertaining.”

— Story by Shane Moritz