Renato D’Ettorre of Renato D’Ettorre Architects

Renato D’Ettorre’s architectural vision is steeped in the wisdom of the past, striving to capture the essence of the present while leaving a timeless legacy for the future through durable designs.

Earlier this year, the first house by Renato D’Ettorre Architects, South Coogee House, appeared in the Stan series Prosper as the home of a crazed cult leader and his wife. Chiselled into a cliff along Sydney’s coastline, its vast, skylit colonnades and circular glass observatory form the exalted backdrop to a story of evangelical zeal and hubris; a modern-day Greek tragedy, if you will.

D’Ettorre’s architectural creations are the stuff of gods and monuments: sculptural and stoic, powerful yet refined and deeply romantic.

D’Ettorre’s architectural creations are the stuff of gods and monuments: sculptural and stoic, powerful yet refined and deeply romantic. He long ago adopted the palette of his ancestral home, Italy: travertine, concrete, marble and stucco. “Rome teaches you materiality,” he says, citing The Pantheon, which, after almost 2,000 years, still boasts the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.

“We’re all innately drawn to primitive forms. I think about space as if I’m carving it from stone, and I get excited about Islamic, Mayan and Egyptian architecture, where they have carved out spaces that last forever.” These influences run deep for the architect, from the ancient wonders of Apollo’s Temple at Delphi and the walled Islamic courtyards of Andalusia to the modernists Carlo Scarpa, Louis Khan and Jørn Utzon, and even the rustic village piazzas of Sardinia.

“We’re all innately drawn to primitive forms. I think about space as if I’m carving it from stone, and I get excited about Islamic, Mayan and Egyptian architecture, where they have carved out spaces that last forever.”

It seems unlikely these classical references could resonate so much in Australia, but D’Ettorre insists that the fundamentals of architecture are timeless. “Principles from centuries ago are still as relevant today. A quiet courtyard, a cooling fountain … water is essential to architecture. These are not new ideas, but they’re sublime – intensely human and wonderful to live with. A 500-year-old Sicilian villa is as beautiful today as ever.”

Few architects can tame these coastal sites like D’Ettorre, deftly balancing the dualities of shelter and prospect, light and shadow, rawness and refinement. On a Sydney cliff above the turquoise teardrop of Gordon’s Bay, GB House encapsulates this beautifully. Its whitewashed facade is a beacon, concealing a home of intricate depth and layers – a cave and a lighthouse. At its foundation, a music room is literally carved into the bedrock, leaving a wall of sandstone exposed where a natural spring trickles. In the higher living levels, a suspended bris-soleil of glazed bricks tempers the sun, helping frame the endless sea and sky. Here, the living area carefully partitions and stages the experience to heighten its exhilaration, as if teetering on a sandstone cliff were not enough.

Few architects can tame these coastal sites like D’Ettorre, deftly balancing the dualities of shelter and prospect, light and shadow, rawness and refinement.

“A house must be thrilling – it has to capture the ephemeral elements of light, shadow and reflection and always offer some new sensory experience. That is architecture,” assures D’Ettorre.

In nearby Surry Hills, Italianate House involved the reversion of a three-storey terrace from offices back to a family home. There’s a moment in the new section that takes your breath away – a double-height brick archway with a mezzanine study – put there as a vantage point to the stillness and light that fills the room.

For an architect whose projects are often epic, it’s a wonder how, in this crowded corner of Sydney, he will find the stillness he says is essential for daydreams and the creative process.

“It was all about ambiguity,” says D’Ettorre. “We cleaned up the bones, removed the faux and revealed the essence of the original structure. To that we added new elements in a very precise way, to link the past and present, keeping the original small-arched corridor and adding the larger brick archway. Extending the original brick walls upward gave them a grandeur they never had but was easily imagined.”

It’s a project close to his heart, not only for its location but for what it represents – the creative act of starting with the ruins of a place and adding only what’s necessary to bring the remains back to life. He thinks about this in all his projects: “What will this be like in 100 years or more – if only one wall is standing, then you start again from that.”

“A house must be thrilling – it has to capture the ephemeral elements of light, shadow and reflection and always offer some new sensory experience. That is architecture,” assures D’Ettorre.

D’Ettorre emigrated to Australia from Abruzzo with his family when he was seven. He studied architecture in Sydney, working with Seidler Architects, then took a gap year in Sardinia and Rome where he worked for architect and historian Paolo Portoghesi and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi. He also utilised his time in Italy to oversee the production of granite for Seidler’s Sulman Award-winning Grosvenor Place at Circular Quay. On returning to Australia, he went to Canberra and worked on competitions with Romaldo ‘Aldo’ Giurgola – the esteemed architect of Australia’s Parliament House – before returning to Sydney for South Coogee House, the commission that launched his practice.

In the studio, D’Ettorre collaborates with his wife, interior designer Belinda Brown. They had met through connections in Canberra, where Brown had studied silver and goldsmithing at the Canberra School of Art. Unlike their romance, the professional partnership took time, but today it is second nature. As D’Ettorre sketches, the pair discuss ideas, the words and pictures flowing freely.

“Principles from centuries ago are still as relevant today. A quiet courtyard, a cooling fountain … water is essential to architecture.”

Thirty years after completing South Coogee House, D’Ettorre is at another pivotal point. The hiatus of Covid gave him time to dream and relocate the practice to a modest laneway property in Darlinghurst. “It will be such a joy to invite people into the new studio and host events here, for our space to become part of the culture,” he says.

For an architect whose projects are often epic, it’s a wonder how, in this crowded corner of Sydney, he will find the stillness he says is essential for daydreams and the creative process. “You wall yourself in, like the Islamic gardens,” he says. “Go to Morocco and you can be in a hectic bazaar with people and noise everywhere, then walk through a tiny peephole of a doorway and find an unexpected world opens up around you. You can still hear the bazaar, but only just enough to remind you it’s there. The built form should be enough to keep the city at bay, but still somehow connected.”