13
Was your design starting point location, function
or budget?
It was such an unattractive building. The layout was
an uninspiring rabbit-warren that seemed to go on
forever. It never opened up. The pool was also inside
the original building and we knocked down two
levels above that pool to reclaim some of a terribly
over-developed backyard. Now there’s a sense of
generosity. It feels good. That’s the transformation.
That’s an important point. Anyone can build big
but to make spaces relevant and in proportion is
much harder. It has to feel like home and earlier
you talked about the monumental references of
GPOs and large civic buildings yet you still need
human scale.
That’s exactly right. Even the approach to the house
is critical to the initial perception and expectation
of what exists within. Up close everything makes
sense. We didn’t want it to be viewed as a neoGeorgian knock off. We tried hard to get a much
more serious balance to it than that.
That’s a common concern of any architectural
style – that they are often plagiarised quite badly.
There’s good and bad plagiarism and we see some
terrible examples for instance of modernism
that does nothing but discredit the extraordinary
original intent.
We returned to that era that paid such attention
to exceptional detail. We established that reference
right from the start that this should be an older
building type that would balance the modern
building we introduced. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed
the process but we were very mindful that it could
have quite easily been a disaster.
Your windows reveal a more modern approach.
Georgian housing typically treated windows as
the space left over trimmed with pretty mouldings.
We wanted to help display the clients’ amazing art
work and so the window treatment is much more
gallery-like and emphatic.
A Grand Revivalist