I get so excited when I see an email from Australian architect Scott Weston in my inbox. He has been a regular on Desire to Inspire for quite some time now as he generously shares his latest projects. What gets me so excited though, is that not only are his projects so inspiring in their colour choices, storage solutions and great design, Scott generously gives us an insight into his design process, material selections, plans and models. The complete package. Today is no different. I'll let Scott explain SWAD's latest work.
It's been a while since I shared what we have been up to in SWAD world. We have just completed a 70m2 apartment in Darlinghurst for a female doctor who sold her house up in the blue mountains and is now living full time in the city. The existing apartment was 'surprise surprise' a cold white bland space devoid of any personality but had great natural light. The general colour scheme of materials and finishes was generated by the Client's favorite colours as shown by the handbag with it's walnut, powder blue, copper, olive green and silver grey palette. On the ground floor we designed a continuous floor to ceiling walnut timber 'hero wall' 500mm wide x 5626mm long that concealed everything. The bespoke cabinetry housed TV, stereo, speakers, flexible shelving, electronic push touch drawers and secret walk-in pantry all finished in a light olive green. To break up the scale and planar shape we inserted linear and vertical niches that were hand finished in copper leaf and reflect beautifully both natural and artificial light. The return end wall housed the kitchen wet area and appliances and we used grey mirror to reflect and give the illusion of greater depth to the room and reflect the new landscaped external balcony room. The pantry is a great exercise in planning and design and reminds the Client of being on board an airplane or ships galley with everything having it's own specific place.
Upstairs the existing 'white blandness' continued with a bedroom, separate inglenook office and a rather dark and dingy wardrobe room. Walls were demolished and the entire room was opened up and the joinery insertions seamlessly defined the three functional activities of bedroom, office and robe. A light crown cut timber was used for the general robe wall and extended out to form the office and framework for the upholstered bedhead. A beautiful grey green hand drawn wallpaper with pistachio green overtones was selected to define opposing walls and to house a concealed triptych mirror and cupboards to the robe corridor. The office borrowed on the flavours of eau de nil with a desktop of powdery olive linoleum and a cashmere pinboard in a similar hue. Turning the corner there is a vertical library shelving system and facing the window the oversized king size bed with powder blue cashmere bedhead. Direct and indirect strip lighting creates great visual drama to the spaces and the finishing touch being the grey/lilac carpet that ties both upstairs and downstairs together very elegantly. The Client took a leap of faith about the lilac carpet as I said many a time convincing..... that if we did just brown carpet the whole space would become very flat and the visual interest would not be there. Very happy Client and a pleased Architect.
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Sat, 3 Dec 2011
