;)
SEARCH
OR VIEW ALL PROJECTSOR GO BACK TO SEARCH RESULTSOR VIEW ALLPROJECTS BY ARCHITECT DAVID HICKSRESIDENTIAL PROJECTS1999 PROJECTSPROJECTS IN MELBOURNEPROJECTS PHOTOGRAPHED BY EARL CARTER |
While preparing a slide show recently for a lecture that was to be given to fellow design professionals, David Hicks claims he had a full circle epiphany.
'There it was, 20-something years between the first slide of my childhood home and the last slide of my latest Job, but the similarities were startling - right clown to the Persian rugs framing a mix of contemporary furniture and antiques. There was also the same flow of interior to exterior - I have subliminally revisited my youth."
Growing up in the "caftan wearing, Gin Sling expat world of 1970s Malaysia "where everything was rigid and scheduled", Hicks says the attention to detail was exacting but the pace of life, in strange contrast, was relaxed. This dichotomy is perpetuated in the designer's work. Every room he sets his creativity upon is furnished with luxury items, used in such a casual way as to undermine their preciousness. 'And that's the way it should be," he intones. I can't stand the notion of keeping the best china for special occasions."
In his refurbishment of this two-storey house - an orderly steel structure with a heart of glass - Hicks combined Confucian simplicity with modernist thinking.
He made the most of a solid, square-shouldered building, "circa early 1990s", that turned its raw concrete-rendered back on a street of mock-historic architecture, and painted its façade and perimeter wall in nose-thumbing black.
"This gave the building a strong graphic quality," explains Hicks, who used the negative space of the black backdrops to fashion contemplation gardens of exquisite lightness.
Though not a strict adherent to the ten of the Zen landscaper, he placed large wire tumbleweeds woven Melbourne florist and sculptor Joost and a reclining Buddha into entry garden with the same sensitivity to asymmetric composition. Asian cultures the spaces within compound walls are treated as interior says Hicks. "The outdoor incorporation of art that might ordinarily inside reinforces this oriental feeling. It's also very resort glamour."
Which, says Hicks, was in the brief. Although the pre-existing house was in no state of disrepair and the hierarchy of spaces worked, it's new owner was keen to lighten the palette (formerly steel blue and timber evolve the boxed-in kitchen to a more extroverted space and eke "little nook" bathrooms out into lavish "hotel-style" sanctuaries.
"The living rooms were simple exercises in styling, but the service areas were re-worked to fit in with the scale of the house," Hicks say
'Elements such as the en-suite vanity (now eight metres long) were made more monumental, more streamlined." And more glossy, in that Gucci showroom kind of way, which is hardly surprising given the client's positioning at the fast end of fashion and Hicks' experience in glamour shop fit-outs.
Similarly, the kitchen, the hub of a double height pavilion which serviced a dining-room on one side and an informal living-room on the other, was re-defined as a linear open-ended strip - all white gloss, Calacutta marble and stainless steel. "The client is a straight down the line modernist - he loves the work of German-American architect Mies van der Rohe, Knoll furniture and wanted everything white and silver," Hicks notes. "His wife, on the other hand, is an exuberant entertainer who has more eccentric tastes definitely leaning towards the Asian. But the house was big enough to take both expressions of personality."
Which explains the stone Buddhas and van der Rohe's Barcelona chairs. "But then the Miesian interior was often a mix of modernist
furniture and the Oriental," Hicks thinks aloud. "You could also say this house's hybridisation of styles is very Australian. We now more openly embrace the outdoors, visually and physically, and are more exposed to Asian culture, though we still like to reference the best of the West."
Where off-the-shelf modernism fell short of the Large scale" mark, Hicks went bespoke, designing such pieces as the three metre long dining table. This richly figured veneer, finished to a mirror shine, was carried through to a back of house "male domain" (study and den) designed with the same padded comfort and class of a private cigar club.
I always bring it back to clothing," says Hicks. "You can buy a real designer piece or you can buy the high street rip-off and try and get the same look. But you'll never get the same quality or the same satisfaction in the wearing. Aldo Gucci said it so much better: 'Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.
|
|
Maple Grove House as featured in
View ALL MEDIA or click image below for more information.
