Pretty Imposing

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday February 4, 1999

by Michelle Staggs

It's hard to go wrong when you're renovating a sun-filled Art Deco apartment.

T'S easy to imagine Tim Whitehead's apartment in the 1940s, with children playing hopscotch on the Tasmanian oak parquetry floor, or grown-ups sipping martinis and drinking in the view of Elizabeth Bay.

Today there are no children or martinis, but many of the '40s interior features remain. Architect Jane Davie explains: "Basically it was a matter of building on what was here. We wanted to keep it simple ... Tim also wanted to keep the Art Deco feel."

She waves at an Italian Halloween pendant, dropped from the ceiling over the dining table. The huge mustard orb is studded at the base with small indigo cones. At the flick of a switch, it lights the room with a warm, golden glow.

"See how it picks up on the colour on the trims?" Davie says. The skirtings, architraves and door and window frames have been painted a soft, dainty green, now perfectly illuminated.

The bullets of indigo highlight a deep federal blue, used at the back of the living room's laminated glass shelves. Each shelf comprises two sheets of glass, with rice paper fused between. Federal blue features again on the rear wall of the kitchen and in the hallway.

"The idea was to have accent colours, so we neutralised the other walls, painting them white," Davie says. The original colour scheme was pastel green and yellow - "pretty awful".

Both client and architect saw the potential of the flat's north-easterly aspect. Sunlight pours through the windows, where Silent Gliss blinds keep the heat out. "Because there is so much natural light, we could afford to have a light colour scheme with dark features," explains Davie.

Brushbox timber and stainless-steel fittings have been used throughout. In the kitchen, a brushbox veneer benchtop is teamed with open shelving around a stainless-steel oven and hotplates. Recycled blackbutt is used for the narrow benchtop that runs down the hallway. Daniel Whiting wall-mounted lights, made of Tasmanian myrtle, are evenly spaced a metre above it. The bathroom features limed brushbox, again with stainless-steel taps and toilet-roll holder.

Changing the kitsch colour scheme was the easiest part of the job: "That was pretty much a proviso when Tim bought the place."

The challenge came in deciding how to open up the kitchen to the living area. "It was like a completely separate room, which really didn't suit, and there was just a door leading from the kitchen to the dining area," Davie says. Fortunately, she could capitalise on an existing concrete beam above the adjoining wall.

"The beam meant it was non-load-bearing brickwork, so we could remove it without causing any internal structural changes to the building. It also meant that we didn't have to get council approval."

There was also the option to remove the wall between the dining room and the sunroom. "We toyed with that idea ... but we decided that the 'intactness' of the sunroom was very important. I think with modern apartments there's a temptation to make everything open, but then there's no actual delineation of space. That's what's so nice about this flat."

The most ingenious decision was to create a laundry in the hallway, tucked behind bi-fold doors. "There was another door leading to the kitchen from the hall, and it just didn't make sense. It was such a waste of space," Davie says. "There was previously no internal laundry, so it was a logical step to try and find space for one. We just bricked-up the space where the door was and demolished a cupboard on the other side of the opening to the kitchen."

The result is a perfect washing nook. White Japanese tiles on the splash-back and stainless-steel taps match the bathroom's interior and create a symmetry between the rooms.

Originally from Melbourne, Davie admits it's difficult to find a client base in Sydney. After working for several architectural firms, including Mitchell Giurgola Thorp, she decided to go it alone about three years ago. "It does take a while to get established. Coming from Melbourne, you don't have the same contacts as you would if you'd been to university here. But I really enjoy it - and it's good to be your own boss."