Architecture design is about occasions.
I have just returned from a week in Sydney. We stayed in a friends one-bedroom apartment in Rushcutters Bay, a very small apartment in an older building.
The building was built of double-skin brick, had few windows and was dark, like a villa. It was how Sydneysiders combated the heat in the old days: thermal mass, and few windows. Now with modern houses, it’s glass walls and air conditioning.
It’s inner-city living, medium-to-high density, but the area seemed lush with vegetation – street trees and, where possible, small gardens or potted plants.
Arches are back in fashion when you read the Australian design magazines, but arches are the natural way to form an opening when you are building in brick. But what I really loved was the trend of hard corners of square buildings being softened with a curve. Curves are more expensive to construct but worth it.
The apartment being small makes you realise how much furniture, clothes, books, second bathroom, a laundry, cars, etc, we now live with compared with the past. The modern house has needed to get bigger just to accommodate all our stuff. I also realised the apartments were so small that many of our occasions can’t be accommodated in them and so the plethora of corner pubs and many public parks in Sydney.
Up the road was a laundromat, cafes, several mini supermarkets, and all the other retail outlets you need to live in one area. We walked everywhere or tubed to go further.
As a couple, we could live happily in the apartment. We would be careful of what we brought into the apartment, space being so precious, but is that a bad thing? The only issue that bothered us was not being able to get outside or the feeling of being enclosed. Now many of the older apartments are adding small balconies to allow the outside in and increase the feeling of space.
paul@leuschkekahn.co.nz
021 894 895
leuschkekahn.co.nz
