When architect Peter Stutchbury first met the late Basil Borun, a prospective client, in 2020, Borun swept him up in a conversation about the universe.

“He was particularly fond of the Milky Way and would talk about constellations and their formation with a great depth of passion and understanding,” Stutchbury says.

Borun was a renaissance man: in addition to qualifications in aerospace engineering, the one-time NASA employee was a trained architect. Despite this expertise, he engaged Stutchbury’s firm to design his new home in the Blue Mountains .

“I’m not sure precisely why he chose us, but there was a lovely quality that existed between him and I that was very evident from our first meeting, and I guess that quality related to mutual respect,” Stutchbury says.

Borun’s home, dubbed Night Sky, offers wondrous views of the Milky Way through a 3.5-metre elliptical skylight, or oculus, that punctures the soaring living-room ceiling.

The property’s position on the edge of the village of Blackheath, almost…