design et al are delighted to announce that Blainey North & Associates have won the Residential £40 Million Plus (Property by Value) Award within The International Design and Architecture Awards 2017.
This project is a unique penthouse built at the top of a skyscraper in the previous mechanical plant rooms in Sydney, Australia. The design brief was to create a unique penthouse to house the clients dearly loved art deco furniture collection. The initial concept was informed by the buildings special relationship to Sydney harbour and was based on littoral fusion, referring to the line of interface between land and water, and its convergence with the urban linear form.
Certain artisan skills were required for a project of this grandeur, Guitar makers made the ‘black ribbon’ (all the cornices, handrails, architraves, datums) as these were the only people Blainey North & Associates could find who could make the perfect three-dimensional curved forms. The four-storey main living area was 3D mapped and then the timber laid in panels and then hand formed, in the same way a guitar is made.
A black sinuous line was introduced into the interior, which literally and visually connected all the intersecting spatial volumes. This piece of lacquered black timber, crafted by guitar makers, transcends function, moving from being a dado rail, to a handrail, to forming bedside tables. Blainey North & Associates’ favourite aspect of the project is the staircase in the formal living space, which exists like a sculpture in the space. The cornice sweeps down the wall to make the handrail, and then this handrail sweeps down the staircase to become an under stair bar, and then a dado rail.
Blainey North & Asssociates believe that the design works so well because it feels like a grand home, with many different rooms and moods. Simultaneously, everything seems linked and has this beautiful datum line, like the line of the edge of Sydney Harbour. The design is inspired by the natural environment seen from the building, the coastline. It also embraces the nature of the apartment tower, drawing on its geometry and materiality in the interior.