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FOLIO
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Bates Smart
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
Folio is our regular feature highlighting the importance of decorative lighting in the work of a design studio. This issue we present Australia-based Bates Smart.
Bates Smart is a multidisciplinary design firm delivering architecture, interior design, urban design and strategic services across Australia, with a staff of over 200 in studios in Melbourne and Sydney. Its award-winning projects transform the city fabric and the way people use and inhabit urban spaces and built environments. The team understands the social and economic forces currently shaping communities and
their impact on built environments of the future. Its founders were innovators of their time, and the firm are leaders in the debate on how and where we work, meet, live, learn and heal. The approach is not simply about making big gestures, they nurture and develop every size of project and all its elements, until the details complement and enhance the whole. Bates Smart’s clients are the partners that make the work it does
Pic: Shannon McGrath
possible, understanding their commercial objectives and the risks that must be balanced to bring their projects to fruition successfully. As Bates Smart moves forward, its studios embrace the challenge of each project, questioning assumptions and testing solutions until they find their bespoke optimal outcome. www.batessmart.com www.batessmart.com
Corrs Chambers Westgarth SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA Bates Smart was engaged by Corrs Chambers Westgarth to design its new Sydney office as part of an integrated fitout in the Lord Rogers designed, 8 Chifley Tower. The building is designed with a distinctive side core floorplate and dramatic three level atrium voids creating ‘vertical villages’. Over ten levels, the Corrs tenancy includes two ‘vertical villages’ and, on the upper level of the tenancy, an open terrace area with dramatic views. Soft organic elements and warm natural materials counterbalance the strong materiality of the building, offering a timeless design solution and befitting Corrs’ position as Australia’s leading independent law firm.
Crown Metropol MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA The premium five-star Crown Metropol hotel is ideally placed to capitalise on the business, convention and leisure markets. The hotel offers 658 guest rooms including twelve dedicated spa rooms, 32 suites and one apartment. The spacious rooms feature an abundance of natural light by day and intimate atmosphere by night. The day spa and pool facilities are located on Level 27 and take advantage of breathtaking city views. A 25-metre lap pool with infinity edge and hot plunge pool takes centre stage in the pool area. The top floor of the hotel, Level 28 is occupied by the club lounge facility, which includes an intimate and moody cocktail bar with screened views over the pool and an external terrace showcasing the Melbourne skyline.
Pic: Shannon McGrath
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA Located on the third floor of Crown Towers Resort in Melbourne, the 120 capacity restaurant overlooks the city across the Yarra River in the space vacated by The Fat Duck. Guests enter through a theatrical ‘Alice in Wonderland’ 20-metre ramp that creates the illusion of becoming increasingly smaller as they walk towards a kaleidoscope. A concealed automatic sliding door opens to reveal the restaurant, host desk and expansive show kitchen. The interior incorporates a rich palette of famous photographs that influence the upholsteries on the custom furniture and custom carpet with dark lacquered wall panelling and timber table tops and waiters stations. Custom design light fittings also reflect the richness of the famous photographs from the book Historic Heston. The textured ceiling motif is designed on the Tudor rose, a motif used in the design of the chandeliers in the London restaurant. Ceramic jelly mould wall sconces designed for the London restaurant were installed above a Sommelier station.
Pic: Peter Bennetts
Pic: Mark Roper
National Centre for Synchrotron Science MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA The National Centre for Synchrotron Science is a spectacular building that celebrates the science of light through the art of architecture. The visually alluring new visitor centre takes its cue from the Australian Synchrotron’s international role as a sophisticated, high technology research facility using light as a medium. Providing a gateway and new public face for the campus, the contemporary, innovative and intelligent architecture for the Centre is a confident symbol and celebration of the Synchrotron’s ground-breaking work. One of the design elements deployed to express the nature of light in the Synchrotron is a play on the traditional dark lecture theatre. A vast array of halo-shaped fluorescent lights punctuate the felt-lined ceiling to demonstrate the power of light as the sole experience in the calm soft grey aesthetic of the lecture theatre.