#77 July/August 2013 — projects Elenberg Fraser / Carr Design / Woods Bagot / Wrightson Stewart / discourse Bates Smart / profile The Bold Collective / in review 13 Rooms / survey Workplace-making / industry Blurring the lines / special report 2013 Milan Furniture Fair — australiandesignreview.com
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interior design review
interior design review
July/August 2013
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contents july–august 2013
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REGU L ARS
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FEAT U RES
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PRO JECTS
76 Mirvac Melbourne Woods Bagot 84 Savills Brisbane Carr Design 90 Slattery Australia Elenberg Fraser 98 Wrightson Stewart Studio Wrightson Stewart
SHOWCASE
Editorial Contributors Dateline Read Designwall
In Review: 13 Rooms Profile: The Bold Collective Survey: Workplace-making Discourse: Bates Smart Industry: Blurring the lines 51 Special Report: 2013 Milan Furniture Fair
104 Insight: Fabrics 112 Folio Show 120 Spotlight
The Ro chair, designed by Jaime Hayon for Fritz Hansen. See Inside’s special report on the 2013 Milan Furniture Fair, p56
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In many of their projects, there is a composed theatricality underscoring the contextual possibilities of display.
Australia. That said, the working relationship between Simpson and Mulvihill needs very little external support. “We are very good friends and that is a big part of it. We have the same sort of values in life and aesthetic, but we have different skills. For me, that is what makes it work. I tend to be good at the bigger picture, whereas Damien is more thorough and meticulous with details, and those skills complement each other very well,” explains Simpson. While only a third of the fi rm’s practice is retail, it is perhaps the most visible presence – with Marcs, Mimco, Bendon, Corporate Culture and Mud among its clients. One of the practice’s earliest projects was the James Cameron store of 2008. On a limited budget, the project began as a compilation of ideas, including the classic 1960s French fi lm noir, Le Samouraï, stored in a mint green archive box. As the project progressed, that one
practice DesignOffice
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simple box was transformed into a feature wall fi lled with more than 400 identical boxes. Its colour, meanwhile, became the foundational shade for a store with a keen sense of the Melbourne male aesthetic: “[Cameron] wanted something uncomfortable, which is very difficult in retail, to want to do that, and to understand the confidence in wanting to make a space which is very masculine and not alienating.” Drawing on the existing elements of the chequerboard flooring and the simple geometrics of the fi ling boxes (which become the packaging for each purchase), DesignOffice completed the theatrical ambience of the store, with chairs and lighting of absolute quality. This is an approach continued with the fitout for Mud Australia in New York, in which the product is displayed simply on Vitsœ’s Universal shelving system (designed
by Dieter Rams in 1960), while a glorious Slow chair (conceived by the Bouroullec brothers for Vitra in 2006) provides a tangible aspiration point. Ostensibly, the display aesthetic DesignOffice has developed is tantamount to artistic exhibition. Says Simpson: “There is a much bigger link between exhibition and retail design than is often acknowledged. It’s all about understanding the product or the object or the exhibit and what it is that either needs to make it appealing or tell a story; trying to understand its story and respond to it.” Essential to achieving the right space for Mud was fi rst appreciating the product and also understanding the process of buying the product: rather than ordering a predetermined set, the process requires an investment of time as various combinations and colour weights are explored. As such, the tables used in the store are large enough for settings to be compared
Above—Order and restraint in the recent New York fitout for Mud Australia. Photo by Scottie Cameron
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Above—DesignOffice created a residentialinspired fitout for My Catwalk’s retail space in Double Bay, Sydney. Photo by Dianna Snape
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A rolling g mass of cheap and cheerfull tterracotta pots hung upside do down from standard acoustic ttiling certainly checks the spectacle cta box.
Melbourne restaurant The Press Club opened at the bottom of the landmark Herald and Weekly Times Building, on the corner of Flinders and Exhibition Streets, in late 2006. A partnership between celebrity chef George Calombaris and restaurateur George Sykiotis, it met with a rosy reception, quickly becoming renowned for its imaginative, contemporary take on traditional Greek cuisine. This was fasolada for the Audi set, with the moneyed atmosphere to match. In what is perhaps a sign of the times, though, The Press Club has been downsized, shunted up Flinders Street along with its pricey high-end menu and professionalclass attitude. In its place, we now find Gazi, the corner girl with a foul mouth, offering up Greek street food and a good time. Gazi takes its name from the Gazi neighbourhood in Athens, a burgeoning gay and lesbian quarter and a nightlife hotspot. On the day that I visited the restaurant, diners could select from menu items including the salaciously titled ‘Bendover Box’ (‘savoury to sweet, quick and fast’) and ‘Doing it Greek Style’. To translate this attitude into a new interior for the restaurant, Calombaris hired local design practice, March Studio. Managed by partners in life and business, architect Rodney Eggleston and graphic designer Anne-Laure Cavigneaux, March Studio may be familiar to some for its work on the Aesop stores. Its projects typically feature a severely reduced material palette of just one or two key elements. It deploys these elements, though, in a highly calibrated way, creating dramatic forms and textures through repetition. Sykiotis met Eggleston and Cavigneaux at a dinner party; Sykiotis, a bit of a family man, loved the fact they had named their
Opposite top— The entrance to Gazi references its namesake: a former industrial district of Athens famed for its nightlife Opposite bottom— In stripping away the previous Press Club fitout, March Studio has revealed the site’s history – including ink stains left over from the Herald and Weekly Times days
recently born son Albert, after Cavigneaux’s grandfather. Meanwhile, Calombaris, it turns out, loved March’s Aesop stores. The restaurateurs decided to offer them the Gazi gig. The only issue was, March had never done a restaurant before – and it would need to finish the fitout in just eight weeks. With the Gazi moniker in place and street food on the menu, the touchstone for the project became Melbourne’s late night souvlaki joint, Stalactites, famous for its 24/7 schedule and kitsch plaster ‘stalactite’ ceiling. As Calombaris put it to me during a phone interview, the brief was simple: “Spectacular, without being pretentious and wanky.” Fortunately, while March Studio may not have much restaurant experience under its belt, it does know a thing or two when it comes to delivering high-impact, sculptural ceiling planes, as anybody familiar with its work for Aesop or Baker D Chirico will attest. Its solution at Gazi, a rolling mass of cheap and cheerful terracotta pots hung upside down from standard acoustic tiling, certainly checks the spectacle box. It also serves as a double layer of acoustic dampening, important given the lean approach the studio has taken with the restaurant floor below. March has stripped the space back to its raw concrete bones, expanding available seating from 80 to 130 seats, but also exposing the history of the building – the stains and scars left behind by previous occupants. When I visited the project with Eggleston, he pointed to a charcoal black datum that extends around the room’s walls just below the ceiling plane. It looks like the remnants of an old fire, but it is in fact
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Tiles Philip Chia, director of The Uncarved Block, turned to Patricia Urquiola’s Mutina tile from Academy Tiles for his fitout of the basement food hall at The Galeries on Sydney’s George Street. Chia was inspired by the inner-city hub’s urban fashion and lifestyle shops and sought to reflect this in the tiling he selected. “The hexagonal tiles’ relief pattern is reminiscent of textile fabrics,” Chia says. “It’s the artistry of creating a visual texture.” The team also chose a circular bronze Penny Round tile for the dramatic staircase and an off-white colour for the columns, also from Academy Tiles. “The round tiles are more sympathetic to the shape and form of these architectural elements,” Chia says. While specifying tiles is certainly not new, what has changed is the ways tiling can help designers craft a particular aesthetic. Striking tiles from Alloy Design’s Karim for Alloy range have been used in Melbourne’s Crown Casino Retail Street project by Red Design Group, which features glitzy titanium gold and mirror polished stainless steel tiles. The range is a partnership between fl amboyant US designer, Karim Rashid, and Sydney-based Alloy, and includes eight metal tile ‘cells’ that each embody a distinctive shape and colour. Creative tiles are fi nding favour in residential projects, too. Marc Dixon Architect’s renovation project in Carlton comprises bathrooms in varying shades of yellow. In particular, the ensuite features the brand new ‘Sunburst’ colour from the Waringa range, available at Johnson Tiles. “We like to experiment with different things,” Dixon says.
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Top—In the bathroom of the Carlton Residence, Marc Dixon Architect has used vibrant Waringa Sunburst tiles
Centre—The Galeries food hall in Sydney, by The Uncarved Block. Photo by John Gollings
Bottom—Kink tiles designed by Karim Rashid for Alloy, specified by Red Design in Crown Casino’s Retail Street
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Mosaic Experimenting with mosaics has become a theme for Anna Drummond and Trish Turner, the co-directors of CoLAB Design Studio. The studio’s design for The Vincent Hotel in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Albert Park features two prominent murals, crafted from hand-cut glass mosaics and depicting exotic floral motifs. The hotel was once famous for its vast internal garden, long since lost; and these mosaics allude to that past. The designs were produced in China and installed piece-bypiece and number-by-number. “The colours form a decorative renaissance palette and break up into fragments, inspiring the rest of the hotel’s genteel spaces,” Drummond says. “The idea of a consistent narrative that is expressed in every detail of the design is what makes a successful fitout.” The Uncarved Block likewise turned to nature in its whimsical, custom-designed mosaic wall as part of the Melbourne Central Food Court project. Intended to hold the visual attention of children, it offers images of owls and butterfl ies to push the boundaries of food court design. Mosaics can help create warm and rustic interiors, too. Mim Design’s design of Cotta, a new restaurant in the West End precinct of Crown Melbourne, uses mosaic tiles from Artedomus that furnish the walls behind the kitchen servery. “The Artedomus mosaic tiles add texture to a large expansive wall, which is highlighted by the play of light and shadow,” explains director of Mim Design Miriam Fanning.
Top—In its design for the Melbourne Central Food Court, The Uncarved Block created a strong visual impact with this custom-designed mosaic. Photo by John Gollings
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Centre—Intricate mosaics in The Vincent Hotel, Melbourne, by CoLAB Design Studio. Photo by Shannon McGrath
Bottom—Artedomus tiles used in Cotta, a project by Mim Design. Photo by Derek Swalwell
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