La Scala, the Australian home of architects Ingrid Richards and Adrian Spence, is a building that challenges assumptions about residential architecture, subtropical design and urban site use to create a more adaptive, enduring and exciting response.

Its arches, colonnades and terraces seem to emerge from beneath the vegetation, and the architects describe it as a "ruin of the future", partly for capturing the building as not only contemporary but also innovative and avant-garde, while at the same time feeling almost ancient. With its vast space and simple yet elegant palette of concrete and brick, it could be mistaken for an art gallery or other municipal building.

The real difference between architecture and architecture is not in their components, but in how design responsibly treats its site. La Scala is two houses around a central courtyard, with the larger main house located in the south facing the city and the smaller house located in the north facing the street. It subverts the typical arrangement of "house and senior residence" to provide a fuller and more exciting use for the site. Most importantly, it improves flexibility beyond the domestic to cover any number of future uses.

This arrangement of a pair of buildings around the central courtyard has a special expression in terms of architecture and experience. As a place that can comfortably respond to individual residents and large gatherings, the main focus is on the management of spatial sequences, where contrasts between low and tall, bright and dark, rough and smooth are amplified by limited material tones.

The courtyard itself becomes a kind of outdoor space, raised and protected by the buildings at either end, whose walls are connected and enclose the space between them. Although the courtyard is actually above the natural ground, it is experienced as an amphitheatre due to its stepped landscaping, ha ha walls replacing the traditional pool fence, and a double roof terrace several metres above the courtyard.