When Pasquale Cianfagna has a public open house for his new luxury Cottesloe beach pad next week, the first person through the doors will be his wife, fashion designer Aneka Manners.

Manners, who has been working in London, has not yet seen the property, which has been built where a 1970s Bauhaus-style home once stood hidden by a 1.8m solid wall and double garage.

The owners’ design goal for the their contemporary three-level house was to bring bring that wall down and let the local community in rather than shut it out.

Being Italian, we like to watch the world go by,” owner Pasquale Cianfagna told Western Suburbs Weekly.

“That’s what you do in Europe and now it will be like that at our place.”

Mr Cianfagna, who owns a commercial and residential real estate business, oversaw construction in Perth, while Manners, who speaks multiple languages, lives in London on a three-year secondment to run a bank.

One of those rare left-brained/right brained marvels, and exceedingly organised, she had already bedded down all the design details, and ensured everything the couple wanted could be procured, before leaving the country.

“She has been living away the whole time it has taken to build this house,” Mr Cianfagna said.

“She returns on August 29 for 10 days, when the house will be finished and open to the public so when they walk through it that will also be her first time walking through our completed home.”

The community will have an opportunity to view the Broome Street residence, which was custom designed and built by Humphrey Homes, over two weekends this month.

Mr Cianfagna said he expects his wife will be thrilled by the final result: an entertainer’s dream, grounded and tasteful, relaxed but refined, and perfectly aligned to their sociable personalities.

What sets this down-sizer apart is that it doesn’t turn away from the street, even though the owners still have the ability to control their privacy.

In fact, it appears to be intentionally bucking the gated-fortress trend that is so prevalent in some pockets of the western suburbs.

“The owners didn’t want to be shut off from their community,” Humphrey Homes in-house architect Helen Marchesani explained.

“The architecture engages with both the street and the front and rear garden and it is intentionally transparent to create a visual connectivity with the neighbourhood.”

It also has particularly low walls, built as planter boxes, and an undercroft garage at the front so the home feels approachable and reflects the owners’ desire to engage with their community.

Ms Marchesani was careful to balance those public spaces with some dedicated private spaces that the owners could retreat to.

“They wanted to be able to sit on their front porch, or in the dining room, and greet their neighbours on the way to and from the beach, and in the evening retire to the quiet seclusion of the north-facing courtyard at the rear,” Ms Marchesani said.

To achieve this, she included a spacious street-facing balcony and positioned the main living areas at the front of the home, but on the ground floor.

To manage the harsh western sun in the afternoon, she incorporated deep eaves.

She then tucked the alfresco and courtyard garden to the north where there was more privacy as well as shelter from the strong south-westerly winds.

Ms Marchesani said the three-bedroom, two bathroom home, built on just 408sqm, was complete with a light-filled, louvred art studio and is serviced by a lift to deliver a considered long-term downsizer for the couple, who now have two adult children and three grandchildren.

Mr Cianfagna said his wishlist for the home also included tapping into the soul of his Italian heritage.

He said his parents came to Australia on a boat in the early 1950s.

They were from Abruzzo, a mountainous and hilly region of southern Italy overlooking a beautiful stretch of the Adriatic Sea, east of Rome.

While Mr Cianfagna was born and raised in Joondanna, a special feature of his childhood was the obligatory annual tomato-sauce bottling event with his extended family.

Keen for the younger generations to now carry this family tradition in their own hands, he asked builder Dean Humphrey to incorporate his very own red sauce bottling area in the new basement.

He said for his mother, making sauce and pasta is not about cooking duties, it’s an essential part of her and her husband’s heritage and family history.

And she never uses recipes or gadgets, just a handful of simple ingredients combined with pure heart and instinct.

Mr Cianfagna wants his family to appreciate the dying art of making sauces and pasta by hand – and for them all to learn how his mother makes her knock-your-socks-off tomato sauce and legendary silky pasta.

For example, her lasagne, he said, is not fancy and is perhaps even a bit spartan by Aussie standards, but it’s a beautiful thing.

“Dad passed away 14 years ago and mum is still living in the Joondanna family home where we have always made the sauce. But mum is 93 now, so I thought it’s about time to have all the family here doing it,” he said.

“Mum doesn’t read or write because she never had the opportunity to go to school so everything is in her head and I don’t want that to be lost because when she makes a lasagne with just layers of her pasta and her meat ragu in between sprinkled with a bit of cheese, people cannot believe how good it is.

“When the kids go over there to cook with her and they ask how many grams of something they should put in, she says, ‘What are you talking about? You get up at 5am and you come to my house and you watch me make it and you write it down’.

“Mum doesn’t measure out anything, everything is done by feel.

“So we’ve put a very simple stainless steel kitchen in the basement – it’s not high tech – and we’ve put it in so we can make the sauce down there.

“We hope to have at least 10 or 12 of us here making sauce every year now.”

It’s perhaps little wonder, then, the formal dining room is at the core of this welcoming home.

“A dining room was one of my must-haves because I wanted to bring back the tradition from when I grew up where we’d eat at the table every night and have Sunday lunch there,” Mr Cianfagna said.

“You see theatre rooms but we wanted a formal dining area, a separate space, to eat together and slow down.”

Mr Cianfagna said building with Humphrey Homes had been a seamless experience, adding the team nailed the brief, which was to create a home that increases a sense of community and enhances interaction with environment.

“I met Dean and Helen from Humphrey Homes by going through one of their home open events,” he said.

“Another mate from my surf club also knew Dean so I never got quotes from any other builders – I just went straight to him and I don’t regret it.

“It’s been the greatest experience and we’d do it again in a heartbeat because Humphrey Homes are so good, with trades people who have been with them for 15 years, and they know their stuff so everything runs like clockwork – there are no stuff ups.

“You can go to cheaper builders but you’re not going to do that for your forever home because you don’t want any problems and I’m going to miss them because you’ve been hanging around each other for three years and its a long time so they become part of the furniture.”

He said he and his wife are now looking forward to settling into their new home – a celebration of the la dolce vita way of life.

Article by Katie Hampson. First appeared in the Western Suburbs Weekly, Thursday, August 20, 2026