A halo of luxury in Canberra’s property market
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When Ben Matthew builds a home, the sky is the limit. And in partnership with his friend and architect Ben Walker, he pushed the limits of his latest luxury Deakin abode far beyond.
This isn’t the first time we’ve written about the “Ben and Ben” duo. Their last collaboration – The Collector House in Narrabundah – stood out in Canberra’s inner south as a multi-award-winning home recognised by both the Master Builders and National Architectural Awards.
So, to see the pair team up for an even more ambitious project in the blue-ribbon inner-south suburb, anticipation was high.
In 2023, Ben and his wife Joe – along with their daughter Indie and soon-to-arrive Bella – purchased a 1950s home on Gawler Crescent, just a few streets up from The Lodge and around the corner from Canberra Girls Grammar School and Deakin shops.
From the outset, Ben’s vision was to build a high-tech, architecturally brilliant, family sanctuary – combining international design flair with warmth, personality, and the ability to challenge every part of his skill set.
Photography: Thurston Empson
The brief was simple yet bold: a concrete structure rooted in core architectural fundamentals, but maintaining the presence of nature in every room and using all the viewpoints the block had to offer. And after several intense months of collaboration between the two Bens, HALO was born.
From the moment you arrive, it’s clear this home is different. The house seems to float – on three massive concrete datums balanced above a base of four anchoring stone blades with intricately laced aluminium screens sweeping around the curved upper-storey concrete. On one side, the house appears to hang unsupported.
Three internal garages sit at the front, though you wouldn’t know it. They disappear into a sweeping curved aluminium batten wall that opens on command. That same wall guides you to the entrance through a monumental 2.8 by 1.8 metre reeded glass pivot door. It’s a little Art Deco feature and a quiet nod to the original home, which is used throughout the new structure.
Photography: Thurston Empson
Although the facial recognition security brings you screaming into the 21st Century. One quick scan of the face – and we’re in, like a mobile phone.
Inside, there’s an immediate sense of calm and spaciousness as the home unfolds around you.
Photography: Thurston Empson
To your right, the formal living room is defined by dry-stacked grey sandstone walls. But this isn’t your standard feature. Ben and Ben spent months sourcing the right tone and grain, creating render after render. Not too blue. Not too tan. A subtle matte grey that adds depth through texture.
Eventually, Ben Matthew found it in a Byron Bay quarry. It was then a matter of hiring a trucking company to do a 26-hour round trip with multiple trucks, hauling 60 tonnes of raw material back to Canberra, where it was broken up and carved by hand into what you see today.
That stone becomes a continuous thread. It flows through glazing lines and sliding doors, wraps courtyards, frames the front balcony, and links the entry to the rear entertainment zone. The sliding door tracks are recessed into the stonework, allowing the material to run uninterrupted from inside to out.
Photography: Thurston Empson
Grab a book before sitting on the lounge, and we’d be surprised if you opened it. You’ll be drawn instead to the angled window shroud – a window seat precisely formed to frame Black Mountain Tower and the tree-lined street below like a curated piece of art that changes by the hour.
On the opposite side of the room, glass doors run floor-to-ceiling and behind soft linen drapes, you discover the first “halo” – a vast circular concrete void formed into the upper slab that hovers over the lounge’s rear terrace. In the centre of that void stands “Penelope”, a 13-metre-tall, 9-tonne Canary Island date palm named by Ben’s daughters.
She was sourced from Gosford, trucked down on a low-bed semi-trailer, and craned into place. She now anchors the home as a living monument. Both Bens agree – she was the perfect choice.
Photography: Thurston Empson
A curved glass window at the hallway’s end sweeps you into the main family space – an expansive open-plan living and dining area that feels lifted from a design magazine. But this is no show home. Ben and Joe selected every finish, preserving the authenticity of their vision. Bronze mirrors, a dry-stacked fireplace, and open oak veneer shelving stretch from wall to wall.
The kitchen anchors the room, flowing into the butler’s pantry and bar, all centred around a 4-metre slab of 80mm book-matched Tundra marble laid as a monolithic piece.
But it is the splashback which steals the show. That same marble was bent around two cylindrical rangehoods. This internal radius faceting is painstakingly difficult – something even the local stonemasons, Pacific Stone, had never done. But they nailed it. The result is a fluid dance of form and texture that mirrors the home’s architecture inside and out.
Photography: Thurston Empson
Meanwhile, the butler’s pantry is so well-equipped that the main kitchen could be purely for show – save for the dual ovens and six-burner induction cooktop with gas wok burner. It contains three Vintec wine fridges, bar taps with hot, cold, and sparkling water, a second dishwasher, and a prep sink.
The finish detail is obsessive. Handles, lights, columns, and fittings were powder-coated in a custom bronze kinetic finish because Ben Matthew simply could not tolerate any other colour. It leads to a cohesive and beautiful vision.
Photography: Thurston Empson
On the opposite side of the room, a huge Victorian ash–reeded glass door leads to a multipurpose room – designed to be a fifth bedroom, downstairs master suite, or rumpus. It’s fitted with a hidden ensuite accessed through a joinery panel. The ensuite is a hybrid, featuring a traditional Swedish sauna and a private outdoor shower with direct pool access, functioning as a wet room bathroom.
One thing that cannot be overlooked is how immersed in glass you feel throughout. Every room offers views – of the pool, the cubby house, the gardens. The connection to light, nature, and family is everywhere.
Photography: Thurston Empson
Stepping outside through the 10-metre stacker door, you’ll find a 10 x 4–metre, 2-metre-deep heated pool, paired with a gas-heated, eight-person circular spa off to the side – forming the second halo.
The pool fence appears to levitate above the tiles, built from stainless steel, curved on its leading edge, bringing softness to the space. There’s built-in seating, a full-functioning outdoor kitchen, sink, and fridge.
Photography: Thurston Empson
Above, Australia’s largest rectangular single-pane skylight –5m by 2.5m – sits at the centre of a concrete rectangle. It’s tilted on a steel frame and lined with perforated metal to let smoke rise and sunlight filter into the BBQ pavilion below.
From this point, you’re able to look up and appreciate the monumental structure in front of you. While most people would question the idea of covering the second-storey windows with a batten screen, there’s a method behind Ben and Ben‘s madness. This is no traditional screen, but a kinetic façade or living skin. Made from over 4,000 powder-coated aluminium slats mounted on motorised pivot panels, they offer total control – sun shading, privacy, and ventilation. By day, they filter light without blocking views. By night, they glow softly like a Chinese lantern. Thermal efficiency meets visual poetry.
Paired with thermally broken frames and double-glazed Low-E glass, the home achieves an impressive 6.5 Energy Efficiency Ratio – remarkable for a house of this scale and ambition.
Ben Walker’s idea to expose structural elements became one of Ben Matthew’s favourite features, including the steel columns that sit inside the glazing line, which hold the weight of the structure above.
“There’s something honest about structure on display,” he says.
Photography: Thurston Empson
Climb the oak-lined stairs and you’ll notice the walls curve upward, twisting like a corkscrew spine, coated in Venetian plaster and polished with Carnauba wax to create a soft, mottled matte surface you can’t help but touch.
Above, greenery spills over a void. You look up and see the home’s crown jewel: Australia’s largest circular, single-pane, double-glazed skylight. This massive 2.5 metre halo floods the staircase and upper gallery in light – a window to the sky.
Photography: Thurston Empson
At the top, a glass wall frames the Brindabellas through Penelope’s crown. Another reeded ash door leads to the master suite—a 75-square-metre north-facing retreat that feels more like a luxury penthouse.
Motorised curtains vanish into the walls, revealing a perfectly framed curved window. Black Mountain greets you each morning.
A catwalk-style robe leads to a bathroom clad floor-to-ceiling in Tundra marble. Oak joinery softens the edges. A curved wall guides you into one of the most spectacular showers one could hope to stand under. With a 1.5m circular skylight centred above dual rainheads. Finger-milled Tundra marble wraps the circular walls, perfectly aligned with the skylight’s radius.
Photography: Thurston Empson
Off the master, a Juliet balcony offers a place to sip your morning coffee, staring into Penelope’s canopy.
Every bedroom is arranged around a massive sweeping concrete arc – a cantilevered structure that links all the entertaining zones while shading the lower floor in summer. But you’re not looking at a roof – you’re looking at a garden.
That rooftop garden was planned from day one. Carefully planted with natives, sago palms, and flowering shrubs, it now spills over the edges, softening the concrete and connecting every room – upstairs and down – to greenery.
And it wasn’t easy. Every structural layer – irrigation, lighting, speakers, falls, box gutters, parapets – had to be coordinated into the concrete pour from day one. It had to perform like a traditional roof while being sculpted in place. Drainage was hidden under the stone and routed through steel columns – completely invisible.
Even the pool plant room is tucked beneath a garden bed, behind bronze slatted doors. What’s usually an eyesore blends seamlessly, and the design language is never broken.
Photography: Thurston Empson
And if you have read this far and taken in the vision, then get ready for the literal and figurative pinnacle of this home.
At the back of the upper-floor gallery, there’s a door to a staircase that leads you to a 70-square-metre rooftop terrace, surrounded by frameless glass balustrading. A 4 x 4 metre cantilevered umbrella is set into the concrete lounge. There’s room for a 10-seater dining table. You name it – this is an entertainer’s dream.
From up here, you can see through every layer of the structure and truly appreciate what you’ve just walked through – the pool, the palm, the courtyard void, the rooftop garden.
But beyond the home itself, you have 360-degree views of the city – the Brindabellas, the Arboretum, Mount Ainslie, Black Mountain (and you can’t help but notice the word HALO inscribed at the bottom of the pool.)
Photography: Thurston Empson
This is where the family gathers to watch sunsets, sit together to watch fireworks on New Year’s Eve, where hot air balloons float past at eye level during Balloon Aloft – a crown jewel few can claim.
This is where the entire journey – months of design, engineering, sculpting, lifting, arguing, solving, detailing, and refining by the two Bens – comes together.
Ben Walker says the process of working with Ben Matthew was “highly collaborative and underpinned by his knowledge and interest in contemporary building practices. His attention to detail is applied at every stage of the process from initial concept planning, through to decisions on construction type, and into final selections of materials, fittings and fixtures. He is also genuinely curious about progress in modern development and building techniques which results in a questioning of the best way to do things at each step of the process. I think this curiosity and drive is what sets his projects apart.”
A journey throughout this incredible home confirms this, particularly when the last step to the rooftop is made.
And suddenly, it all makes sense. The ultimate cherry on top of a very ambitious, very personal, and completely unforgettable cake.
Want to see HALO for yourself?
HALO is launching to the local and international market place soon. Pre-market viewings available by private appointment through Josh Morrissey on 0437 799 234.
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All photography by Thurston Empson
