Domain Prestige - April 12, 2023

12 APRIL / 2023

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WRITTEN IN THE STARS The future of Aus tralian architec ture

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B RO U G HT TO YO U BY

B y K ATE FARRE LLY

Brighton Melbourne 12 Dudley Street $21 million-$23 million J OSE PHIN E H U YN H

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Expressions of interest: Close 5pm, May 3 Agent: Forbes Global Properties, Michael Gibson 0418 530 392 When agent Marcus Lloyd-Jones whispered of the most recent recipient

From the manicured Paul Bangay gardens to the

of the highest residential award for architecture in Australia – the Robin

timeless Stephen Akehurst-designed home and

Boyd Award – coming soon on the market, I knew we were in for something

gorgeous Stuart Rattle interiors, St Ives is a

truly special. From the moment I read the words “Night Sky” in the email it

delight across every inch of its 1900-square-

all came rushing back so vividly – the parabolic vaulted ceiling, use of

metre, golden-mile block. There is a multitude of

recycled bricks and retractable skylight tilted perfectly to the south to gaze

living spaces, including a home cinema and

at the stars at night and cast an elliptical light that glides across its walls

library, and there’s a lift to all floors from the

during the day. At the peak of COVID, the 2021 National Architecture Award

eight-car garage.

Winners were announced via a livestream. From a shortlist of 57 finalists, I remember one winner – Peter Stutchbury’s Night Sky. Why? To try to summarise this house is virtually impossible but this week, writer Paul Best describes just how spectacular it was to be in our cover home’s presence.

O U R COVE R 6 Jubilee Avenue, Blackheath Listed by Modern House Photo by Michael Nicholson PAG E 10

HOT PROPERTY Editor: Josephine Huynh Editorial producer: Hailey Coules Group picture editor: Kylie Thomson Senior designer: Colleen Chin Quan Graphic designers: Emma Staughton, Nicole Gauci National magazine editor: Natalie Mortimer Chief marketing officer: Rebecca Darley Chief executive officer: Jason Pellegrino Residential sales: Queensland Amanda Vaughan 0413 370 004 New South Wales Eoin Brawn 0439 907 096 Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory & Tasmania Ray van Veenendaal 0438 279 870 New development sales: Ivan Curic 0413 498 156 Media sales: Sam Hill 0438 348 998 Contact: editorial@domain.com.au

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BRETT BOARDMAN

DESIGN DIGEST Molten metallic tones

ARCHITECTURE A star of the Blue Mountains

LIVING IN Small but mighty in WA

THE PROPERTY INVESTOR Play it safe or get ahead?

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Paradise Waters Gold Coast 125 Commodore Drive 5

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Auction: 11am, May 4 Agent: Ray White Prestige Gold Coast, Robbie Graham 0403 737 788 Watch the sun sink over the Nerang River from the covered terrace or heated infinity-edge pool of this Jared Poole-designed home. The familyfriendly floor plan includes a choice of living spaces, a marble island kitchen with a butler’s pantry, and a six-car basement garage with a wine cellar.

Balgowlah Heights

Relbia

Sydney 12 Tutus Street

Launceston 75 Caledonia Drive

$8 million-$8.8 million

$2.35 million

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Auction: 10.30am, April 22

Private sale

Agent: Clarke & Humel Property, Michael Clarke 0402 425 486

Agent: Ray White Launceston,

A unique facade gives away little of this supremely striking and practical

Joey Maloney 0408 384 385

home, designed by architect Reg Lark and claiming harbour views across to

This Georgian-style home has flagstone flooring

Manly. There is ample space for living and working, with light-filled, open-

and vaulted ceilings – plus a self-contained, two-

plan living spaces, two studies and two studio-style suites.

bedroom converted barn – all on 2.35 hectares.

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TRULY ICONIC QUEENSLAND LIVING Brisbane’s most sought-after riverfront address is now selling.

1, 2, 3 and 4 bedroom apartments and penthouses from $670,000.

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DESIGN DIGEST

Shining, shimmering, splendid Let light and reflections dance around your space with these reflective, metallic accents. C o m p i l e d b y PAU LIN E M O RRIS SE Y STATEMENT PIECE Inspired by the bougainvillea flower, the Totem Light by Daniel Boddam Studio presents a triangulated composition and floating LED tube lights that form a stunning, sculptural vertical piece.

It’s plated in aluminium and stainless steel in a dark brown bronze finish. danielboddam.com

HEART-MELTING Tom Dixon’s Melt Collection is a series of pendants, chandeliers and surface, floor, and table lights, available in copper, gold, smoke and chrome. Born out of an experiment gone beautifully right, each light is translucent when on and mirror-finish when off. livingedge.com.au

CARE FOR A DRINK? Presenting

REFLECTIVE TABLES The Speculum Table by AYTM is much more than a simple box-shaped table. It’s elevated to new heights by its mirrored surfaces, which create the illusion of extra space

a sleek, minimalist

and striking reflections. Choose from grey, gold or rose mirror finishes. trithouse.com.au

design, the Loud Bar Cabinet designed by Farg & Blanche for Norwegian brand, Northern, features functional interior shelves and bottle holders, while its plywood, oak veneer or polished aluminium laminate exterior adds a touch of sophistication. northern.no

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Heaven on earth This architectural marvel lets you gaze at the stars from the living area.

B y PAU L B E S T

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ARCHITECTURE

“W

ow.” There, I said it. Even though I had thought not to.

Particularly as agent Marcus Lloyd-Jones of Modern House warned me, this is pretty much how all visitors react entering the Peter Stutchbury Architecture-designed house, which sits on a modest suburban block in Blackheath, in the Blue Mountains of NSW. But the winner of the 2021 Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture – Houses (New) unwittingly catches you off guard.

I also do exactly what everyone does: My eye traces the fireplace flue up 7.5 metres to the dizzying apex of a parabolic brick vault – an arresting piece of design and construction – before tracking sideways to second ingenious eye-catcher: a 3.5-by-2.5-metre unglazed elliptical skylight, known in architectural circles as an oculus, set into the curved ceiling.

The steel cover retracts, theatrically revealing a clear, blue sky and flooding the house’s main living-dining-kitchen areas with light. Framed in the opening, too, is the moon, funnily enough.

YOUR AGENT Marcus Lloyd-Jones,

gardens. To the east is the main bedroom, en suite and dressing room.

West is a laundry, guest bedroom and study with views across a golf course. This ensures there’s no light polluting night observation.

Both wings, under vaulted ceilings, operate like open rooms off a single long corridor – something Lloyd-Jones likens to salons in an early French chateau. But it’s adaptable: a cleverly conceived system of sliding cavity doors allows rooms to be isolated for privacy.

The passive house also works completely offgrid, producing its own energy and water supply. “The house is radical not just in shape but its notion,” Stutchbury says. “On one level, Basil was ancient in his philosophy but, behaviourally, he was futuristic.”

The result is a house that puts the “core of living” ahead of “the additions of life, the bits and pieces we accumulate”. While the house catered to the owner’s specific needs, it’s accessible to all. It engages with the heavens but also on a very down-to-earth, human level.

“I suspect the person who ultimately buys [it] will have a gentle lifestyle; who is ready for this sort of building,” Stutchbury says.

Blackheath Blue Mountains 6 Jubilee Avenue $3 million-$3.3 million

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Private sale Agent: Modern House, Marcus Lloyd-Jones 0424 005 531

Hover your camera over the code to see Domain listings in Blackheath

BRETT BOARDMAN

“It’s such a beautiful space to be in. The design is slow and subtle.

It changes you.

And with the greatest wonder in nature, the night sky, overhead, it appeals to the child in all of us.”

MICHAEL NICHOLSON

Modern House

This is an apt reminder that the skylight is primarily in place for stargazing – a request by the late owner, Basil Borun, an astronomer, engineer, architecture student and tinkerer, who built the house – dubbed Night Sky – in 2020.

Suffering from diabetes and confined to a wheelchair, the one-time NASA employee would gaze through the oval skylight, tilted 20 degrees south to capture his favourite constellations in the Milky Way. “We spent more time on the size and location of the opening in the roof plane than any other design feature,” says lead architect Peter Stutchbury. “The room radically changes between night and day.”

At night, the sky permeates the room. During the day, like today, the sun edges from surface to surface, like a sundial.

Project architect Fernanda Cabral says the unconventional parabola was Borun’s choice.

“It was his favourite form, inspired by a strong memory of a munitions bunker in Romania,” Cabral says. “His father was Romanian, his mother Ukrainian.”

Standing beneath the soaring vault, you can’t help but be moved. It’s not unlike standing in a cathedral, allowing the space and volume to slowly wash over you. Stutchbury confesses he, too, was taken aback by the “spiritual effect of the building”.

Lloyd-Jones says it “feels ancient and modern at the same time” and is also reminiscent of a medieval castle, an old Middle-Eastern grain store or a railway arch. Certainly, there is a rawness to the material palette – brick, concrete, timber and brass – sublimely put together by Mark Tan of Dimark Constructions.

For me, it feels like I’m stepping into a storybook with a mystical character in a magical setting at its heart.

In contrast to the dramatic arrival are two low wings flanking the central space, which overlook Sophie Zaccone-designed native

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UNDER

Artist’s impression.

*Prices subject to change without notice.

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LIVING IN

31.9979° S, 115.7677° E

PEPPERMINT GROVE GETTY

The “Monaco of WA” is a small but perfectly formed suburb that attracts – and holds on to – the well-heeled. B y PAU LIN E M O RRIS SE Y

YOU MAY LIKE ...

Peppermint Grove

Care for some fun facts about the affluent

who aspired to live in the area to be close to

Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove?

prestigious schools and be a short distance from

Perth 17 McNeil Street

the beach.”

$7 million+

It forms the smallest local government area in Australia, some of the wealthiest and oldest

The owner and instructor of Perth SUP School,

families in Western Australia live there, and

Nicki Jones, is deeply connected to the area – her

former premier Colin Barnett once referred to

grandfather grew up in Peppermint Grove as a

it as the “Monaco of WA”.

keen fisherman and sailor. Today, she helps

Small but sublime

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boarding through her work.

“I have been using the stunning Freshwater Bay

Highway to the west and the Swan River to the

for my sessions for many years, and I have always

east, Peppermint Grove has just under 500

found the still waters awe-inspiring,” Jones says.

homes. However, according to Jody Fewster,

“The waterfront is used for all forms of exercise,

director of Ray White Cottesloe Mosman Park,

be it walking, jogging, kayaking [or] rowing. During

one shouldn’t be fooled by its small size.

balmy summer evenings, it also serves as a

“There’s a good reason why it’s one of the most

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others master the art of stand-up paddle

Comprised of just six blocks between Stirling

sought-after neighbourhoods in all of Perth,” says

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gathering spot for families to picnic and swim.”

Fewster. “It has some of the top private schools

Jewel in the crown

Expressions of interest

in the western suburbs, an abundance of lush

Jones characterises the suburb as a vibrant and

Agent: Ray White Cottesloe Mosman Park,

parklands, and a mesmerising river foreshore.”

energetic place, yet with a sense of simpler times

Jody Fewster 0414 688 988

Having sold more homes in Peppermint Grove

past. When describing her perfect day, it’s easy

On a massive 2209-square-metre block, Braeside

than any other agent, Fewster describes the

to see why the suburb is considered the jewel in

is a sweeping historic home, lovingly restored and

area’s residents as falling into two categories.

Perth’s crown.

renovated. It’s dazzling, from its limestone walls

“There’s the older generation, who have lived

“There’s no better way to start the day than

here for many years and own vast landholdings,

spotting dolphins on my board, followed by a visit

to its vine-clad loggia overlooking the pool.

typically members of the tennis and yacht clubs

to Freshwaters cafe for a caffeine hit, with views

who, after raising their children, now enjoy

of the yachts on the water,” she says. “Then, to

A view of the Swan River

playing with their grandkids at the river and

end on a high note, a twilight sail from the Royal

from Peppermint Grove

Hover your camera over the

parks,” she says. “The second group consists of

Freshwater Bay Yacht Club will have me pinching

– Australia’s smallest

code to see Domain listings

the younger families in their late 30s to early 40s,

myself come sunset.”

local government area.

in Peppermint Grove

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2/29 ALLAMBI RISE, NOOSA HEADS

If love is a sparkling jewel seemingly poised on a

and indoors becomes outdoors as it coalesces with a

ridge over Little Cove Beach, a few minutes to the

prodigious terrace, whilst the piece-de-resistance is

sand, with swoon-worthy eagle’s eye views sweeping

the sky terrace. If the ‘stairway to heaven’ sounds too

across Laguna Bay, the Coloured Sands, Double Island

tedious why not take the lift.

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Agent Chris Miller 0412 894 542 chris@offermann.com.au

Point and beyond, you must have front row seats on a salubrious penthouse sky terrace, or even one of

Auction Friday 28 April 2pm

the three levels below. A sense of serenity pervades

View

the over-generous high-ceilinged living space where bright light shadow dances across the terracotta floor

offermann.com.au

Wednesday 5.00-6.00 & Saturday 12.00-1.00

Agent Jill Goode 0418 714 653 jill@offermann.com.au

NOOSA’S HOME OF PRESTIGE PROPERTY

THE PROPERTY INVESTOR

GREG BRIGGS

Is it time to pay down debt or invest?

Interest rates are high and rising but property prices are falling, so deciding on the next move is a tricky proposition for investors.

B y SU E WILLIAMS

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Liquidity is a key consideration for investors thinking of buying property in a cooling market.

ith the cost of living still high, tremors in the global banking industry, continuing supply-side constraints and weak consumer sentiment about the Australian economy, is this perhaps a good time to pay down debt?

Conversely, could it be an opportune moment to grow a property investment portfolio?

It’s a billion-dollar question, but many experts feel the devil is in the detail.

“The market is a bit volatile, interest rates may continue rising and average household debt in Australia is among the highest in the world,” says Rasti Vaibhav, founder of research-focused buyer’s agency Get Rare Properties.

“But when you’re considering whether you should pay off debts or invest in more property, you have to look at the type of debt you have.

“If it’s bad debt that’s not helping create any income, then that’s a liability on the balance sheet, and, yes, you should pay that down, depending on your personal circumstances.

“But good, income-earning debt is going to improve your net wealth through, for instance,

property investments with rent, cash flow and capital growth, and that’s always going to be worthwhile in the long term.”

So, as long as an investor has a liquidity buffer in case things head rapidly south, this could be the moment to spend on investment properties.

“Now is a very good time for anyone interested in adding to their portfolio.”

The latest data from the Australian Taxation Office shows that, of the 20 per cent of taxpayers who own an investment property, only 18 per cent hold two, 7.7 per cent hold three to five, and a mere 0.8 per cent own six or more.

“But if people stop at one or two properties, as most do, they’ll never get financial

independence,” says Michael Yardney, founder of Metropole Property Strategists. “They need more to safeguard their future. Of course, I understand the level of security and safety people feel from paying down debt, but all the indicators are that this is a good time to buy.

“I believe the property market is going to reset this year, as interest rates are near their peak, consumer confidence will come back and both buyers and sellers will be back in the market.

“There are already some good sales results coming in from Sydney and Melbourne and, this time, when we go into a boom, we don’t have an oversupply of properties to soak up the extra demand.”

Prices will then bounce back, particularly since we have full employment, and a surge of overseas migrants coming, he believes. And by then, a number of potential investors will have missed the bottom of the market.

Chair of Property Investment Professionals of Australia Nicola McDougall also sees that as the danger.

“Nobody knows whether we’re at the bottom or not, but by the time you know it, it’s gone,” she says. “I think now is a very good time for anyone interested in adding to their portfolio, if they have the capacity, with the moderation in prices.

“We’re thinking interest rates are near their peak and, with inflation starting to come down, we’ll see the property market strengthening.

So, anyone who can invest now should be considering it.”

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1730 Currumbin Creek Rd, Currumbin Valley, Gold Coast QLD 3

John Fischer & Shelley Watkins 0478 071 623 | 0474 141 551

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52.35ha

Extremely rare property with 5 titles on 129.45 acres with your own private waterfall and beautifully restored farm house.

Create your own perfect hinterland retreat offering complete privacy just 20 mins to the beach and 25 mins to the Gold Coast International Airport. Set within a beautiful botanical environment you will find first grade infrastructure for grazing livestock including cattle yards and water troughs in all paddocks.

• Machinery Sheds • Restored Party Barn • Original Rustic country barn • Palm tree-lined entrance.

1706 Currumbin Creek Rd, Currumbin Valley, Gold Coast QLD 3

John Fischer & Shelley Watkins 0478 071 623 | 0474 141 551 16 P R E S T I G E

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26.305ha

The perfect place to call home! An established nursery set over 65 acres with huge potential and absolute privacy. It will be sold with the following: 114 x Large Canary Island Date Palms • 45 Large Ponytails • 450 Livistona Australis (Native QLD Palm Trees) • 591 Large Dracaena Draco (Dragon Tree) • Raphus Palms (Large plantation in ground) • 350 Large Xanthorrhoea Glauca (Grass Trees) • 4 Macrozamia Moorei (Rare Australian Cycad) • 10 Bottle Trees • Bore • Flat useable land • Fully renovated 2 bedroom home • Character filled 1 bedroom cottage.

SAPPHIRE BEACH With its idyllic, absolute beachfront position this luxury retreat presents a rare and exceptional opportunity, parallel to the pristine waters and golden sands of Campbells Beach. Set on an unprecedented 2696m² and boasting 63m of beach frontage this private retreat is best described as a 6star resort. As far as location goes, it doesn't get much better than this. With the lifestyle encapsulating beautiful beaches, the Solitary Islands coastal walk, Coffs Harbour airport and the coasts largest regional shopping centre all just minutes away. Comprising what was originally 4 parcels of land (now held on three 3 separate titles), there is potential here to construct additional homes, realise additional capital or simply enjoy peace and serenity that is provided by the room to move. If you're seeking an amazing lifestyle and demand nothing less than the best, you will find this home uncompromising and flawless on every front.

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Monday 15th of May 2023 at 5:00PM Level 1/29-33 Bay St, Double Bay By appointment James McCowan 0418 800 400 David Medina 0419 772 233

All information contained herein is gathered from sources we deem to be reliable. However we cannot guarantee its accuracy and interested parties should rely on their own enquiries.

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14 ST MARGARET DRIVE

Aldgate (adj Stirling)

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'Bungalally Park'- immersed in a 45 acre golden valley sits this outstanding resort.

Sophisticated with facilities rarely offered & lifestyle options galore. A hidden secret, just half an hour from the city centre.

Contact Agent For Sale View By Appointment Only Arabella Hooper 0403 336 407 Leah Chandler 0407 799 928 RL A RLA 61791

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81 Branksome Gardens, City Beach

1,034 sqm lot

LIFE’S A BEACH…1,034SQM LOT WITH APPROVED ARCHITECTS PLANS Offers Closing 14th April 2023 (if not sold prior) Become a South City Beach local and start enjoying this amazing lifestyle in arguably the most impressive street in City Beach! Tucked away in a quiet and highly sought after location, just moments from the beach, cafés and restaurants on the waterfront, the surf club, Bold Park, tennis club, and all the beautiful parks for bushwalks.

Viewing platform on site. Contact Chris to arrange a site inspection or to view approved plans.

303 Stirling Highway Claremont 9286 3655 edisonmcgrath.com.au

Christopher Dee 0413 122 499 chris@edisonmcgrath.com.au

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