Justine and Bryan’s Eden Hills Home

House Fourteen in TH Brown’s In Residence series

A home with heart, soul and the things they love

Justine and Bryan had been looking for a true mid-century house for a long time.

After fifteen years in Canberra, they moved back to Adelaide in the middle of the pandemic and, like many people at that time, made a practical decision. Unable to inspect homes in the usual way, they bought an off-the-plan townhouse as a stepping stone, moved in, and told themselves they would keep looking.

They looked for so long they almost gave up.

As Justine puts it, “we pretty much had given up.” Then this house appeared. They both sent it to each other at the same time, having found it through a Facebook group devoted to retro houses and renovation. It is one of those small details that says everything. Two people already aligned in taste and instinct, spotting the same house at the same moment and knowing it mattered.

There were hundreds of people at the open inspection. The house was clearly drawing buyers, admirers and enthusiasts. But what Justine and Bryan saw in it was not simply style.

They saw a house that could hold the way they wanted to live.

That is what gives this story its shape.

Because while this is a striking piece of mid-century architecture, what stays with you most is the life they have built inside it.

Hanging near the entry are the original architectural plans from 1965, found in the roof and generously left by the previous owners. They still refer to it as the Aird House, after the original family it was designed for. It is an extraordinary thing to have, but it also says something about how they have approached the home itself. This is not a house they have tried to overwrite. It is one they have tried to understand.

That respect runs through the way they have lived with it. The previous owners had already begun restoring some of the original logic of the home, reopening the entry and returning parts of the plan to how they had first been conceived. Justine and Bryan have continued that same approach, balancing restoration with the realities of modern life. There is care here, but no stiffness. They want the house to work and to feel as though it has always been this way. Mostly, it does.

What makes the home so memorable is that it never feels like an architectural exercise.

It feels lived in.

Loved.

Used properly.

That becomes obvious almost immediately.

Before anything formal began, Justine and Bryan made sure everyone sat down and ate. They were perfect hosts: warm, relaxed and generous, the kind of people who make you feel not as though you are visiting a house to admire it, but stepping into a life already in motion. That feeling runs through every room. This is a home that welcomes. A home that feeds people. A home that wants to be shared.

Justine speaks beautifully about collecting, and about the difference between owning things and living with them.

She started collecting in her late teens, long before mid-century became fashionable in the way it is now. At the time, her parents thought it was rubbish, the kind of furniture and objects they themselves had grown up with and dismissed. But over time, what began as instinct became a way of seeing. Then it became a way of living. When they moved from Canberra to the townhouse, and then from the townhouse into this house, they used each move as a chance to let go of anything that was merely filling a gap. As Bryan says, “if we’re going to replace this, then it has to be the exact thing, the style quality that we would like it to be, rather than just finding something that fits the gap.”

That discipline gives the home its strength.

Nothing feels accidental. But neither does it feel staged.

It feels built patiently around what they genuinely love.

And the art matters enormously.

Art has been central to Justine’s life and work for decades. Friends are artists. Colleagues are artists. Works have been bought, gifted, inherited, remembered through exhibitions, and carried across different chapters of life. A Gerry Wedd vase bought on lay-by after a retrospective she curated. Kenny Pittock’s Soy Sauce for Dimmies. Shag. Deborah Paauwe. Elk. John R. Walker. Everywhere you look, there is something with a story attached. But for all that, the house never feels like a gallery. It feels like a home made by people who genuinely love what they live with.

Justine says it plainly: “It’s just stuff that we like.” And then, even more clearly: “If you don’t like it while you’re living with it, why would you buy it?” That principle seems to guide everything here. The furniture, the art, the objects from Mexico and travel, the inherited pieces, the rescued chairs, the old record players, the lighting sourced from Sweden when local options proved impossible or impractical. It is all held together not by a strict rulebook, but by affection, confidence and taste.

There is music here too, and that matters just as much.

The blues plays on vinyl through a restored record player. But this is not a house pretending the present does not exist. Bryan brings the modern layer: the sound, the systems, the solar, the battery, the practical intelligence that sits quietly beneath everyday life. It is part of what makes the home feel current without losing its soul. Mid-century architecture, vintage furniture, vinyl, art and old objects with stories all sit comfortably beside the things that make contemporary life easier. Here, the two do not compete. They simply live well together.

There is a line friends said to them after they bought the house: “You’ve bought your furniture a house.”

It is funny, and it is true, but only partly.

Because what Justine and Bryan really found was a house big enough in spirit to hold the furniture, the art, the records, the stories, the technology, the family, the guests, Trixie, and the life they wanted to keep building.

That is especially clear in the living room, where the TH Brown Rondo Pouffe Set now sits.

Justine had wanted a Rondo for years. Vintage pieces would appear and disappear before she could get to them, or they would need reupholstering, or they would be in a colour that was all wrong. Then came the realisation, as she says, “why don’t you just order what you want rather than keep having to find things popping up on the second-hand market?” Bryan, wisely, turned both birthday and Christmas into one gift and made it happen.

The Rondo Pouffe Set was never going to be just another object in the room.

It was the piece the room had been waiting for.

The old coffee table had long been wrong for the room and wrong for the life of it. While the room already held so much character, it needed something that could meet the house at its own level. The arrival of the Rondo changed that. It gave the room a centre, but also flexibility, softness and exactly the kind of mid-century note Justine had been chasing for years.

She loves that the pieces can separate. One can become a footstool. Another can sit by the record player. The table can anchor the room. When the wider family descends, the children and teenagers tend to occupy this space, spilling around the Rondo, watching television, sitting on the pouffes, and using it as naturally as though it had always been there. That is the sign of a piece truly belonging. It does not ask to be admired from a distance. It becomes part of the life of the room. As Justine says simply, “I love it.”

And really, that is the larger story here too.

This is not a home built around display.

It is a home built around living.

Living with things you love.
Living with art that means something.
Living with objects that carry history.
Living with music, hospitality, family and friends.
Living in a way that feels deeply your own.

The architecture matters, of course. It is a stunning piece of Australian mid-century design, and in Justine and Bryan’s hands it has become something even more special: not simply a beautiful house, but a deeply lived-in home.

A home filled with art, music, stories, family and friends.

A home where good design is there to be enjoyed, not just admired.

A home with soul, because it is so clearly loved.

And perhaps that is the human truth at the centre of House Fourteen.

Yes, this is a remarkable piece of architecture.

But what stays with you is the life inside it, the warmth, the generosity, the character, and the sense that every room has been shaped by people who know exactly what they love and how they want to live.