Tom Robertson has built a practice centred around thoughtful residential architecture, material honesty and enduring design. With a refined and restrained approach, the studio creates homes that feel deeply considered, expertly balancing simplicity, warmth and longevity. We spoke with Tom about the foundations of his practice, the value of restraint, and the relationships that shape the homes they design.

What led you to start your own practice, and how has that shaped the way you work today? Are there particular freedoms or challenges that have come with running your own studio?

I started the practice in 2013, after working as an architect in Melbourne for several years. The motivation was simple: I wanted a closer relationship between client and architect, and the kind of working environment where every project receives genuine, hands-on attention from start to finish.

That intent still shapes the way we work. I remain involved across every project, from early concepts through to detailed design and building inception. The freedom of running our own studio is that we can be selective — about the projects we take on, the people we collaborate with, and the standards we hold ourselves to.

Much of your work focuses on residential architecture. What draws you to working at this scale and what do you find most compelling about designing homes?

The people. Residential work puts you directly in conversation with the family who'll inhabit the project — how they live, how they cook, what they've grown tired of in their current home, what they've always wanted. That dialogue becomes the brief, and it's what makes the work feel meaningful.

The scale also suits the way we like to practise. A home allows you to resolve things at a level of detail that bigger typologies rarely permit — the fall of light across a room, the impacts of scale, the tactility of a material as it ages. Those details aren't decorative, they're the substance of how the architecture is experienced day to day. Getting them right is the most satisfying part of the work.

What does a layered approach to architecture mean within your practice, and how does that thinking shape the way your projects unfold?

For us, layering is less a stylistic device and more a way of thinking. We believe good design is built up carefully — through listening, through testing ideas, through refining the response to context until it feels right. Layers of consideration, layers of materiality, layers of meaning.

In practice, that means projects unfold gradually. We don't rush to a final design. We start with the brief and the site, work through the bigger moves, and then add depth through proportion, light, material and detail. The result is architecture that doesn't reveal itself all at once — there's something to discover the longer you spend in it.

The relationship between architect and client can be incredibly influential on the outcome of a project. How do you approach building and maintaining that relationship throughout the design process?

It begins and ends with trust. Designing a home is a long process, often two or three years, and clients are placing a great deal of confidence in us — financially, emotionally, practically. We take that seriously.

We listen first. We try to understand not just what someone wants, but how they live and what matters to them. From there, the relationship is sustained through honesty and clarity — being upfront about what's possible, what's worth pushing for, and where we'd advise a different course. The best projects we've delivered are the ones where the client has been a genuine collaborator, and that only happens when the relationship is built on respect from the outset.

Your projects have a very refined and considered visual language, often using repetition and restraint. How do you maintain that sense of clarity and consistency across different projects?

The consistency comes from our values rather than a formula. We favour a restrained palette of natural materials, we lean toward elegant simplicity, and we balance pragmatism with aesthetics on every project. Those principles travel from one home to the next, even when the sites and briefs are very different.

Repetition and restraint also come from a discipline of editing. It's tempting in architecture to keep adding — another material, another gesture, another idea. We work hard to do the opposite: to strip things back until only what's essential remains. That takes time, and it takes a team prepared to question every decision. Our team contributes diverse perspectives to that conversation, which is what keeps the work fresh while remaining unmistakably ours.

What are you currently excited about, whether in your own work, or in the wider architectural landscape?

Within the studio, we have a number of regional and coastal projects on the boards at the moment, and there's something exciting about responding to those landscapes — the light is different, the material logic shifts, the relationship between inside and outside takes on new weight.

More broadly, we're encouraged by the conversation happening around longevity and material honesty. There's a growing appetite for homes that are built to last, with materials that age well and a design language that won't tire. That aligns closely with how we've always wanted to practise, and it's a good direction for residential architecture in this country to be heading.

Many thanks to Tom Robertson for offering a thoughtful insight into the values, relationships and considered processes that continue to shape the work of his practice.

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