Table of contents for 87 July - August 2015 in (inside) interior design review

As the winter months set in, it’s good to be able to relax at home, put your feet up and survey your own particular castle, whether it is new built or old, and enjoy that renovation or just be happy that the old wall has a new lick of paint. Whether we live in a Heritage home or have made an eclectic interior all our own, the bones of our home are the key to the interior. So to complement this, issue 87 of (inside) explores a variety of interiors that have each in their own way come back to life or been reinvented to live another. Through the projects and profiles in the following pages there is a celebration of the repurposing and renovation of buildings formerly unused and…

top 5 objects products for some 14 years and has a swag of accolades to his credit. His furniture is timeless, innovative and graces the interiors of such well-known restaurants as Vue de monde in Melbourne and Nomad in Sydney, the exterior of the Sydney Opera House and Times Square New York, while companies such as Google, Microsoft, Westpac and Hewlett-Packard enjoy his designs. 01. Traccia table by Meret Oppenheim, Cassina—This is one of my favourite pieces from when I was a child and designed by Oppenheim, who was a controversial artist in the Surrealist movement. She is the one who coined the phrase “Freedom is not given to you – you have to take it.” I like the idea of my own pieces being functional pets and this table…

Doherty Design Studio has harnessed the hands-on tradition of the traditional spice market, the old-world sensibility of the European retail experience and the contemporary thinking of today to intoxicate and entice food lovers to the new Gewurzhaus Herb and Spice Merchants store in Sydney’s Strand Arcade. “We take our customers seriously, so asked Doherty Design Studio to combine 21st century attention to detail to express our heritage, our customers and our quality,” say owners Eva and Maria Konecsny. The Sydney store was designed to evoke the comfort of a kitchen and to encourage people to linger and explore. Display is the hero of the fitout to showcase the spices, kitchen and cooking essentials and accessories. Spices are stored in curved acrylic tubs along the shop walls and display plinths in…

Bringing the Heston Blumenthal pizazz to Melbourne’s Crown Resort, Bates Smart has set the scene to match the performance. Calling on staging and theatricality for an almost entirely bespoke interior, the design is focused on the experiential. Yet there is nothing of the grit of a circus ring restaurant. Rather, it is a soft landing of familiar white linen dining, where the bombast of the restaurant fades from view as the delights of the dining experience take over. If you are among the fortunate few to have secured one of Blumenthal’s exclusive golden tickets, you will pass through an unassuming door into an impossibly proportioned corridor, lit softly by warm LED. As panelled walls edge closer, the ceiling slopes downward to meet inclined flooring and timber floorboards (Classic Oak by…

The Press Hall supports a community of businesses, a loose association of like-minded people who share similar values, which are expressed through diverse practices. It is home to the Franklin restaurant (a new venture for award-winning chef Dave Moyle), Pigeon Whole Bakers (the quiet achiever with a cult-like following, which has moved to the city from the suburbs) and a studio for Core Collective, the architect of the project. The Press Hall is a carefully considered adaptive reuse of a building that has been continually altered to accommodate a variety of industrial and commercial uses over the last 125 years. Originally the home to Vout, Chisholm and Co carriage works in the 1890s, it became the showroom of V8 Ford City Motors in 1928. The building was extended to two…

Shannon McGrath —Shannon McGrath is a highly respected architectural and interiors photographer with images appearing in many different books, journals and magazines nationally and internationally over many years. A graduate in fine arts and photography, she is also dedicated to an artistic pursuit where, in her spare time, she concentrates on creating personal works and exhibitions. Dr Helen Norrie —Dr Helen Norrie is an architectural critic, urbanist, curator and academic in the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania, and founder of the Regional Urban Studies Laboratory (RUSL), a collaborative project working with local government to investigate regional urban issues using thorough practice-based research methods. Joy Weideman —Art director, art critic and collector, Weideman has a long association with the art world as a principal of the…

A well-deserved industry favourite, Brett Boardman’s architectural photography has been championing the best interiors and buildings in Australia for the last 20 years. Having trained as an architect, his eye for line and form is honed to this industry from a very particular view. Indeed, it is his clarity of scale, angle and linear detail that define his work and see his name connected to the very best of projects on a regular basis. Perhaps less well-known in the architecture and design community are his achievements in portraiture and pictorial essay. His latest book (and accompanying exhibition) is testament to both his eye for formal composition and sense of place. And while these elements translate as clarifications when aimed at architecture or an interior, when directed at cultural environments, something…

The expiry of the lease at the Melbourne office of Kingfisher Recruitment was the catalyst for a redesign of its business and a new design for its offices, and so Tall Architects was commissioned to implement a design that would embrace activity-based working practices and address both the client and employee experience. The tenancy has been zoned from a public and welcoming space, through to semiprivate areas and finally private spaces. This gradation provides varying levels of privacy to suit the required level of client engagement and employee comfort. First impressions are that of transparency and openness; however, a series of intricate rope screening elements help to define the various spaces between the concierge desk and the flexible workstations beyond. The screens weave their way through the tenancy and provide…

How did you come to design? I initially wanted to make movies. I was attracted to filmmakers that created very strong atmospheres: [Federico] Fellini, [Luchino] Visconti, [Stanley] Kubrick, Fritz Lang… I studied architecture to follow Lang’s path but, during my training, I came across two projects that made me reconsider my direction. The first was the Café Costes in Paris, the first modern café in the world. Such a revolution. The second was the Morgans Hotel in New York designed by Andrée Putman for Ian Schrager. Suddenly windows were being opened into new ways of working. Is there one designer, artist or creative person who influenced you in the early years? Le Corbusier has always been a source of inspiration for me. When I started working with Patrick Seguin’s gallery…

Tucked under the Sheraton Hotel in the city centre of Melbourne is a small restaurant the interior of which shimmers like an Eastern bijou in the sunset. Prosaic words for the design of the latest restaurant to join the burgeoning Melbourne Asian food scene, but a fair call when you peer through the large picture windows front and side and see the turquoise jewel inside. East opened its doors in November 2014 and is making quite a name for itself – not only for the excellent food that it serves, but also for its stylish surroundings. It’s not always easy to make an identity for a restaurant that is a part of a hotel. Many have tried and failed, but East has managed to carve out its corner of the…

Located close to Taylor Square in the heart of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, NAS has the dubious honour of having spent its first century as a colonial prison. The high stone wall and imposing gate are testament to this past, as are the cell block and mortuary, now a function space and gatehouse. More romantically, what remain are the grand and extremely beautiful architectural volumes. Moreover, the details of its past are clearly defined throughout the interiors with hewn sandstone blocks still bearing the convict stonemasons’ signatures. With buildings dating back to 1820, no part of the school is entirely of a single age. Rather a legacy of repairs, alterations and fashions progress through the eras, including Building 11’s more recent history as the workshop wing for the Sydney Institute of…

At the high end of the market, David Kane’s kitchen design business, Pepper Design, is proving popular. He recently launched the company’s showroom on Church Street, in the inner Melbourne suburb of Richmond, where he has hosted Iron Chefs from Japan, held whisky tastings and invited the design community and potential customers to monthly cooking demonstrations. “We have a lot of fun,” he says. He adds that the biggest change in cooking right now is the rise of steam technology. “It’s more than gas or induction these days. We’re seeing more customers request steam cooking appliances.” As for design, he says 90 percent of his kitchens are specified with Cosentino’s Dekton, with zero porosity, or porcelain, which is also non-porous. “Kitchens became polarised with Caesarstone and 2-pak, and people have…

Concreate is a formidable new addition to the flooring and wall finish range at Royal Oak Floors, and a beautiful one too. Environmentally sensitive, biodegradable, fast to install and cost-effective, Concreate concrete panels provide a system suitable for floor, wall or ceiling. Using no harmful chemicals, the panels are made at the source where magnesium oxide cement is layered with natural fibres and recycled textiles. Air cured for a unique and natural patina, the panels are kiln baked and finished with Danish oil. Available in three natural shades, white, dark grey and natural grey, the product is effectively a prefinished system of oiled and polished panels with all the qualities and character of polished off-form concrete. Moreover, the product is simply beautiful. It's tactile, warm, fire resistant, aesthetically refined (micro…

The Power of Workspace for People and Business — Pairing an environmental psychologist (Vischer) with an expert in people and culture (Malkoski) to explore the reasons behind investing in a workspace is, granted, a subject of interest to industry only. It is, however, fascinating. The basic premise is that an increased understanding of how people function in their workspace will lead to designing spaces that are better suited to people’s actual needs. What sets this apart from agile, ABW (activity-based working) and so forth is the idea that a solution should be derived from research of the particular workplace, rather than adjusting a solution based on overall workplace research. The language is simple, straightforward and clearly designed to educate rather than obfuscate. Given the nature of the authors’ expertise, it…

| 14.05-01.08 | Yang Zhichao: Chinese Bible SCAF, Sydney | 14.05-26.07 | Go East: The Gene and Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Collection AGNSW, Sydney Ostensibly a two-hand, single exhibition over two venues, Yang Zhichao: Chinese Bible, curated by Dr Claire Roberts, comprises an installation of 300 diaries and notebooks collected as part of Yang Zhichao’s 2009 performance and installation. Effectively a document of the first five decades of Communist China (1949-1999), the diaries present a record of everyday life. They are displayed as a single unit, which Roberts likens to “a patchwork memory quilt”. Concurrently, the Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition, curated by Suhanya Raffel, boasts an extraordinary collection from one of the most prolific and focused collectors of Asian art, and will be a…

Pattern expert Eley Kishimoto, in collaboration with long-term creative partner Studio MacLean, has designed the interior for the latest home of Southerden Patisserie and Café in Central London. The interior project was the result of a previous collaboration for Southerden’s first cake shop in Peckham when Kishimoto’s new wallpapers were incorporated into the interior. After the success of the first store, Southerden’s owner invited Jason MacLean of Studio MacLean and Mark Eley of Eley Kishimoto to design and instigate the interior for the new establishment. The premises were previously used as a hairdressing salon, but had fallen into disrepair. MacLean and Eley have together transformed the building into a remarkable interior that is both dramatic and unusual. The interior features Eley Kishimoto’s ‘Venice’ pattern wallpaper, which covers the interior from…

Antique dealers are an interesting bunch. They have a passion for an object or bygone era that influences their entire raison d’être. They spend a lifetime gathering knowledge and there is a little of the Don Quixote about them as they embrace the quest to find the ‘perfect piece’. These days vintage means 20th century objects; Australian and Danish pieces from the 1940s and 50s are in and Victorian is out, but, for Anton Venoir, an unrivalled collection of French antiques ups the ante and places him in a sphere of his own. As many dealers did at the time, Venoir commenced his career as a collector restoring Victorian homes in the 1990s. He found that he had an affinity for home restoration and, in turn, collecting authentic pieces and…

For those not familiar with the Hydro Majestic, the Hydro, as it is fondly known, is a grand wedding cake of a building in the heart of New South Wales’ Blue Mountains at Medlow Bath. And if the town name sounds a wee bit English, this is thanks to the original owner and department store heir, Mark Foy, who lobbied hard for the name change from the none too salubrious ‘Brown’s Siding’. In a somewhat similar gesture, the refit, courtesy CRD design studio led by Peter Reeves, transforms the most recent version of the hotel completely. And, while many have an idealised version of the hotel in mind, the truth of its pre-refit aesthetic was in fact a hodgepodge of design brilliance and travesties. All of which was overlain by…

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is to Salzburg what oxygen is to ordinary people. His presence permeates the fabric of the picturesque Austrian town and his life is celebrated there in many different ways. One of the finest examples of this is the Mozart Geburtshaus, or Mozart’s birthplace museum located in the centre of the Alstadt (or old town). The entrance at 9 Getreidegasse fronts this famous walking street where hundreds of tourists gather to promenade, shop and soak up the spectacular Baroque architecture. They also queue, in vast numbers, to visit the museum, pay homage to the life and times of the composer and to garner an insight into life in Salzburg during the 18th century. The Mozart Geburtshaus was in need of renovation and restoration and over the past seven…

Duravit’s new range brings stylish design to one of the most important rooms in the home, the bathroom. The outstanding collection, named Cape Cod, has been designed by Philippe Starck for Duravit. The architect and designer has produced a timeless and sophisticated collection. Starck’s inspiration for the new pieces is the well-known holiday area of Cape Cod, New England on the east coast of the US, a destination renowned throughout the world for its elegant houses and the natural beauty of land and sea. Starck has encapsulated the very essence of Cape Cod through this new collection with its smooth lines, classic finish and timeless design. The range of products consists of bathtubs, washbasins and bathroom furniture, and has been created from innovative new materials, while also incorporating the beauty…