Silver House is clearly a home with a story – there is personality to be found in every angle and surface. Yet what makes this project really special lives beneath the surface, in the subliminal threads that run through it: childhood memories, a collector’s adventures, and family ties. Designed by By Mysa, an architecture and interior design studio just past its fifth year of practice, the project represents a rare coalescence of the macro and the micro. Interior designer Amy Banfield and architect Lachlan Dettmer worked in close collaboration to deliver a highly personal home renovation, with a client whose genuine love of design elevated the project from its earliest inception.

Layer into this a remarkable collection of artwork and mid-century Danish furniture, and the nostalgia of a rural Victorian upbringing, and the designers had fertile ground for a forever home endowed with personal meaning.

The client sought to create a highly personalised environment that responded to their lifestyle and cherished art and furniture collection. This meant the original semi-detached white brick home – modest in its scale and construction – became a canvas for structural reinvigoration and spatial expression.

The design process began not with architecture, but with the collection itself – a conceptual foundation that would come to shape the spatial planning, proportion and atmosphere of each space. Materiality and architectural language developed in parallel, each informing the other.

“We really have this macro and micro lens on projects, and we saw this with Silver House: Lachlan was looking at the bigger picture architectural approach, with myself focused on interior design. Together we worked to funnel down to the tiniest, most personal details – to where the smallest artworks would be positioned,” says Amy, who is director of interior design at By Mysa.

The home’s floorplan reflects exactly the kind of lifestyle their client wanted. “We’ve been very intentional about how you experience the entire journey through the home,” says Amy.

To the front of the house sits the main bedroom and ensuite – the private epicentre of the home – alongside a home office with French doors opening to the front garden. Spaces unfold along a long hallway that stretches down the length of the house before opening into the kitchen, dining and living zones. These occupy a new addition that opens out through full-height sliding doors to a beautifully landscaped back garden.

Floorplan layouts happened in tandem with furniture layouts and art placement. By Mysa catalogued the client’s impressive collection and, through three-dimensional modelling, planned out settings to frame and celebrate these functional and decorative pieces. “It’s not a space that feels untouchable and gallery-like, it has a lovely personality and softness that reflect the client’s lifestyle,” says Amy.

By Mysa approached materiality and joinery with a view to sculptural presence and human-scaled functionality. The kitchen perfectly expresses this with an Artedomus Gazaro marble benchtop and full-height splashback selected not from a brief, but from instinct. “We went to select the natural stone slabs without knowing exactly which ones we wanted, other than a certain tonal quality we were seeking for the kitchen.”

Once the Gazaro was chosen, it began to inform the material palette more broadly. “The client wanted an undisrupted representation of the stone in the kitchen, so you’ll notice we don’t have any overhead, the back splashback is almost exactly a single slab; it’s quite monolithic. The natural colour variation and veining becomes the backdrop to that space.”

The marble also becomes the perfect foil to the mid-toned timber flooring and joinery which merges into a singular element. This effectively bookends the monolithic quality of the stone while inviting a sense of intimacy through human scale.

During the stone selection process, By Mysa also discovered an Artedomus Kalana natural stone, Queensland quarried and perfectly sized for the main ensuite vanity. Paired with brushed nickel fixtures, it offers an intimate contrast to the scale of the kitchen, a wellness moment that ties back into the broader interior narrative.

Externally, By Mysa worked with a refined palette of narrow-format brickwork and corrugated iron roofing – a subtle nod to the client’s childhood connection to farm-life in country Victoria. The utilitarian nature of the corrugated iron, balanced by the texture and rhythm of brickwork, folds inwards to meet the refined timber finishes of the interiors.

“You really feel that journey from the outside in. You’ve got the stone, the timber floors, the timber frames around the windows and doors, that then wraps up to this colour brick with its matching mortar. It all becomes one,” says Lachlan, director of architecture at By Mysa.

The garden, lovingly landscaped by a member of the client’s family – complete with salvaged water pump now repurposed as a charming water feature – softens the order and simplicity of By Mysa’s design.

“There are lots of moments of surprise and delight, with the artwork and furniture, even the colour drenching of the powder room in blue. There are many small moments that invite you to stop and notice the spaces around you,” says Amy. It speaks to the tangible magic of Silver House, with its architecture, interiors, furnishings and artwork conceived in tandem, the macro and the micro in natural coalescence.