Hab28 preview mag

# 28 living in design

Southern beauty: the other home of (and side to) Nick Tobias.

De-coding The Smart Home. Buhrich House, a personal memoir.

JULY – SEPTEMBER | 2015 AUD$16.95 | NZ$16.95 | USD$17.95 CDN$18.95 | GBP£9.90 | SGD$11.95

# 28 Things are just things unless there is a story and a meaning behind them. We take a deeper look at design products and ideas, to find their true value.

30. DESIGN NEWS Discover products that prompt the imagination, provide a sense of luxury, surprise us with humour and stop us in our tracks with their pure simplicity.

38. BOOKS High-tech, sensitive to environment and sensitive to social context. These are the qualities that make a home smart, according to three recent titles on the subject. Mandi Keighran tackles the issue of intelligence when it comes to architecture and design.

#30 Confidence and commitment to originality and quality create a certain kind of human. These are the traits of a Design Hunter速, whether in business or the arts.

44. NICK TOBIAS Nick Tobias and his wife Miranda advocate for constant expression of self, so that when it comes to crafting your home, you have cultivated the confidence to create something that is uniquely you.

59. ADELINE OOI She brings a fresh perspective to the Hong Kong version of an established art fair. We find out how Adeline Ooi plans to use art to draw the Asia Pacific region together.

65. ALY AITKEN An ex-motorbike warehouse in inner Melbourne is an unlikely 5-storey backdrop for the dream-like home and art studio of Aly Aitken. Architect Peter McIntyre provided the spatial canvas and Aly did the rest.

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75. ORCHARD PIPER They are small but have a powerfully attractive proposition when it comes to housing. We meet Orchard Piper, a boutique developer that is expanding the definition of value.

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The Smart Home 82. INTELLIGENT LIVING Does technology make a home smart? Simple design strategies?

Or a combination of both?

91. IN THE SHADOWS Light up a luminescent landscape in this character-filled photo shoot styled by Amanda Talbot.

101. DESIGN NEWS Lighting, and products that are low-tech and hi-tech in nature – all can be considered as essential to the Smart Home.

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108. SMART DESIGN Sir James Dyson has seen huge development in Smart Design, from his student days to his position at the helm of his Dyson business.

A warehouse, a farmhouse, a ‘blood moon’ house and more. It’s quite a mixed bag but we love the stories behind them all.

114. STONE & WOOD HOUSE Marrying an Asian sensibility with a typical farmhouse structure could make a matrimonial mess, but Teeland Architecture has achieved a successful relationship in this home in Queensland.

162. LUNE DE SANG The residents named the project after a blood moon and the rest of their tale is just as romantic and emotive. CHROFI are bringing a very special vision to life near Byron Bay on the NSW north coast.

125. INNER-CITY WAREHOUSE A project that started as an invitation-only ideas competition has finished as a winning home by Architects AJC and The Gentry that truly fulfils the meaning of that ubiquitous word – unique.

179. BUHRICH HOUSE A personal take on a very public project. Hear Neil Buhrich’s insights on the heritage-listed home in Sydney’s northern suburbs designed by his father, the late Hugh Buhrich – in which Neil now lives.

141. 17BR-HOUSE Conservation is key for Singapore shophouses and this one by ONG&ONG is no exception – featuring a characteristically showstopping sculptural staircase.

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155. JANUS ET CIE We become acquainted with a luxury outdoor furniture brand that – while founded 37 years ago – is new to us in the Asia Pacific.

issue #28 habitusliving.com

Southern beauty Architect NICK TOBIAS has a thriving practice in Sydney, where he is also based most of the time. But it’s to TILBA, on the far south coast of NSw, that he and his family escape to as often as they can, for a more relaxed way of life.

TexT Nicky Lobo | PhoTograPhy kaTheriNe Lu

2 . portrait

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issue #28 habitusliving.com

previous | nick tobias, his sons samson and griffin, and their pet lagotto, dado, on the back deck, which faces the water. left | a hedge has been inserted to create a sense of arrival. right | the angular lines of the structure are softened by the native grasses and vegetation in the landscape.

2 . portrait

A

lthough Nick Tobias and his wife Miranda purchased their holiday home on the south coast of NSW six years ago, the story actually begins another 25 years before that, when Miranda’s father decided to build a holiday home for his then-young family. He chose the location carefully, looking for somewhere that reminded him of his own childhood holidays in the beachside suburb of Sorrento in Victoria in the 1950s. “There was not a lot [back then],” Miranda says. “There were wooden fishing boats and he used to fish with his grandfather.”

Tilba is not so different from this romantic image. Comprising two villages near the Princes Highway about six hours drive south of Sydney, it has a charming geography of bush, farmland and gentle hills rolling to the Tasman Sea. It was settled during the 19th Century gold rushes and this was probably the busiest Tilba will ever be – the most recent census in 2011 has the population at a total of 391 people.

This number doesn’t take into account the part-time population, which includes Miranda’s parents, Miranda and Nick plus their two young boys Samson and Griffin, and soon, two of Miranda’s brothers and their families.

Together, they are making good of Miranda’s father’s vision – to have a place where the family can come together for holidays, regardless of their dispersed day-to-day lives. One by one the children are returning to the place of childhood memories to build homes on adjoining, very

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# 28 living in design

Southern beauty: the other home of (and side to) Nick Tobias.

De-coding The Smart Home. Buhrich House, a personal memoir.

JULY – SEPTEMBER | 2015 AUD$16.95 | NZ$16.95 | USD$17.95 CDN$18.95 | GBP£9.90 | SGD$11.95

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6/05/2015 12:27 pm