John Wardle

But without actually really thinking deeply about what I liked about the house, I just always thought it was just an extraordinary 20th century house.

And it wasn't until visiting it and spending a day there in 2019 and knowing the story of Woodson, and he'd been forced out of Australia and then banished from Denmark, the Institute of Architects felt he'd embarrassed them internationally, and he went to Mallorca.

And...

And what I didn't realize about that house, it was absolutely buggered.

I've just finished this opera house and I've been sheeted out of there.

I designed everything down to the most amazing curvature of the tiles and the roof.

I'm just going to go to the hardware shop and I'm going to design a whole house for my family with nothing I've designed specifically.

And it's the intersecting terracotta downpipes and standard window joinery.

That beautiful external outdoor furniture, just bathroom tiles, most of which are cut on 45, glazed tiles cut on 45 degrees.

And I got it.

Just I understood the back story and placed it by actually appreciating the building even more so by knowing that.

So that comes back to that early question about is it the story behind things or things themselves?

Well, the story does enhance that level of appreciation.

So that outdoor table is my...

appreciative moment to Woodson's remarkable house at Canalees where I got the floor tiles that had come from just outside Florence.

Not quite Bunnings, but another dear friend.

And we dipped them to this point of just repurposing a humdrum thing, a floor tile, and making it something that would clothe it, like the tablecloth of a dining table.

Apparently I do.

I've been told often that that's exactly my great failing.

I always want to have something in somewhere there.