00:08I really love when furniture and architecture almost start to blend.
00:17Something that we always think about is trying to find the right balance between what's built
00:22in and what is freestanding furniture.
00:27And that really provides a longevity for a project both with flexibility for our clients
00:34and any future owner or occupant of the apartment.
00:39We wanted to explore two things in our concept for this apartment.
00:45One was working really hard to create a sense of space rather than just maximising storage.
00:52And the second one was to push the material palette to a really luxurious, calm, earthy
00:59and slightly beachy feel.
01:11This apartment building is located in Bondi Beach.
01:15Bondi Beach is about 15 minutes east of the Sydney city.
01:20There's celebrities and models at one end of the spectrum and backpackers and students
01:25at the other end.
01:27Similarly, you end up with diversity of cafes and restaurants and properties varying from
01:34both small apartments up to some of the most expensive property in Australia.
01:40A client is a young professional who wanted to be both close to work and the beach.
01:47This apartment's located in an art deco building.
01:50We think it was built around the 1930s.
01:53It's always really nice working in an art deco building.
01:57They just naturally have a lot of charm.
02:01You usually get at least two sides of windows which allows for cross ventilation and just
02:07that much more light to filter into the space.
02:12The first thing for us when we got this apartment was to really gut it.
02:17There was a lot of corridor and a lot of tight small rooms in what isn't a big apartment.
02:26We were really gifted with this apartment that it predominantly faces north which really
02:31meant there was no reason for us to radically rethink the floor plan.
02:35We removed the walls to the kitchen and got rid of the door heads and a little bulkhead into
02:41the corridor space just so the spaces flowed a bit more.
02:48One of the really nice things about this apartment is when you walk in you just don't feel contained.
02:55You immediately have space even though it's not a huge apartment.
03:00The first room when you walk into the apartment is really the kitchen.
03:04So it was important for us that the kitchen didn't feel too much like a kitchen.
03:09You know we kind of wanted the kitchen island to almost balance being joinery and a piece
03:14of furniture and being a really beautiful object.
03:20Having a slide out down a table really created some flexibility in this space.
03:27Day to day it means you just have more room for living and circulation but if you've got
03:33guests over you can seat four people.
03:38The slide out table meant we had to be quite clever about how we Tetris things together on
03:44the other working side of it.
03:48We decided to do two under bench fridges rather than a full height fridge so that we both created
03:55a really great sense of space.
03:57Again, making the kitchen not feel like a kitchen and also not blocking any light.
04:07We used two materials in the kitchen, a stainless steel and travertine.
04:11The stainless steel is really hard wearing and functional and the travertine is beautiful
04:17and soft.
04:21On the other side of the kitchen we've got a washing machine, oven, dishwasher, bin storage,
04:28a two burner induction cooktop, a large sink and a couple of extra drawers.
04:37One of the great things about using stainless steel is we could integrate the sink and we
04:41pour a nice large one rather than having two little ones.
04:47Instead of having cupboards covering a window up, the shelf does a few things.
04:52One, it really helps maintain a lot of light coming into the apartment and beautifully things
04:58that sit on top of that shelf get lit up through that natural light.
05:04Not having anything at a higher level also helps increase that sense of space so you never feel
05:09like the room's enclosing in on you and it also presented an opportunity to have strip
05:14lighting underneath it to light the kitchen bench.
05:17We're very concerned about our lighting.
05:19Most of it's hidden and we have uplit the ceilings in a lot of locations.
05:29We intentionally left the living room free of any built-in joinery to create an opportunity
05:35for the client to add to it over time and to build its own character but also creating
05:40a really beautiful space.
05:42And sometimes if you're building furniture everywhere it almost feels like a tighter apartment than
05:48it necessarily is.
05:49I think an attribute of bigger apartments is you do have these open spaces that are really
05:55flexible.
05:59It's really nice having tiles in the apartment because you live so close to the beach when
06:03you come back with sand all over the place you won't scratch them and they'll wear really
06:08well over time.
06:11Because it's such an old building some of the walls just aren't straight and square.
06:15However, mosaic tiles are almost perfectly square.
06:18So to deal with that clash we installed a travertine border.
06:26In the hallway to the bedroom we had the opportunity for some full height storage partly as an overflow
06:31for the main bedroom but also for all the stuff that nobody wants to admit exists in a tiny
06:37little apartment like your Dyson, your brooms, your mops, your cleaning products.
06:42But thinking about it meant that we put power in the right location.
06:48You kind of get drawn to the bedroom through a beautiful sandcast bronze light by a designer
06:56called Henry Wilson.
06:58The bedroom has the nicest outlook with a really wide sash window that looks onto a beautiful
07:05frangipani.
07:08On one side of the bedroom we have floor to ceiling storage but so the room didn't feel
07:13smaller we split the storage into two parts.
07:17One draws down low then we had an open shelf and then storage for hanging above that.
07:23We didn't want to have any down lights on the ceiling in the bedroom so instead we added
07:27strip lights inside the wardrobes to help with both functionality of seeing the space but also
07:33a little touch of luxury.
07:37And at the back of that little shelf we had a mirror that just doubles that sense of space.
07:42The shelf becomes a really great spot for putting objects and alleviates the requirement for too
07:47much stuff to go on a bedside table.
07:51The feel of the bathroom departs a little bit from the rest of the apartment.
07:57We reorganised the whole bathroom but maintained the two north facing windows.
08:03We used a beautiful Moroccan handmade tile in the bathroom and whilst the colour departs
08:08from the rest of the apartment it still tonally ties in.
08:11A datum splits the colour of the tiles with the lighter white tiles just to help the space
08:19feel a little bit brighter, lighter and more open.
08:23To make the most of the space in the bathroom we created a combined shower bath.
08:28And I call it a shower bath because it's more shower but you could fill it up and use it
08:34as a kind of pseudo-Japanese tub if you wanted to.
08:39The mirror in the bathroom runs from wall to shower and really helps make what is a very
08:46tight bathroom feel quite comfortable.
08:50Vertical heated towel rails take up less space but also heat down the length of the towel.
08:59We didn't do too much to the second bedroom slash study.
09:04It's being used as a home office right now but we wanted the flexibility that it could
09:09one day become a second bedroom.
09:14The thing that we loved about this apartment was it was a real exercise in quality over
09:20quantity and that's something that we think is really important in all building work.
09:25What we're building from a sustainability point of view should be able to last the test of
09:30time.
09:31We're not just thinking about how to cram as much stuff in as possible but we're always
09:37thinking about trying to find the right balance between storage for what you need and also
09:43flexibility of the space and the sense of space beyond that.
09:47That's a great feel.
09:58that's a great idea just so.
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