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OR VIEW ALL PROJECTSOR GO BACK TO SEARCH RESULTSOR VIEW ALLPROJECTS BY ARCHITECT FREEDMAN REMBELRESIDENTIAL PROJECTS2001 PROJECTSPROJECTS IN SYDNEYPROJECTS PHOTOGRAPHED BY SHARRIN REES |
There's nothing unusual about a brief changing during the planning stage, but in the case of a Sydney apartment designed by Freedman Rembel, that change couldn't have been more dramatic.
"The clients brief was to, make it warm," says Freedman. "We made it welcoming and colourful and immediately accessible."
And so what was initially planned as a library just inside the front door is now a sitting room with a pair of burnt orange Lunar sofa beds covered in pink satin and blue and purple corduroy cushions; two wardrobes contained in a wall unit; spotted Akari floor lamp in one comer and a wall completely covered in colourful decorative masks from around the world.
It also gives an idea of .the tone of the rest of the two-storey apartment -it's practical, colourful and flexible, it mixes classics with new and not necessarily known pieces, it's not precious.
"You've got to have fun," says Freedman. "Serious design can be painful."
stand at the top of the curved staircase, reworked with elegant solid balustrade and timber steps, and see the chandelier exploding out of it in a flock of goose feather-winged light bulbs and you're left in no doubt whatsoever that there will be nothing insipid about this particular place.
"We felt amazement that an apartment in this category could be so indifferent -it was bland and vulgar at the same time." Beige carpets and cream walls throughout, flimsy-looking internal doors, a white marble staircase with chrome balustrade and timber handrail, a nasty jagged arrangement of walls and doors on the back wall of the living room with doors directly opening to the powder room, electrical cupboards and other service areas. "There was no sense of calm, the room was not at rest," says Freedman.
And so apart from getting rid of the boring colour scheme, replacing doors throughout with multi-paned, bevelled-mirrored doors (inspired by a scene from Dangerous Liaisons) and installing a kerning timber floor (chosen for its stability), a priority was to give the living room "a back", a slightly stepped wall of American white oak, which from one angle appears to be flat, while from the far corner of the room, that volume breaks into fragments and you can see that the wall incorporates shelving.
Service areas best not viewed from the living room are now closed off behind a doorway cut into the wall.
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