I think everywhere you look in the Plateau Project there's always a glimpse or a tease into the next
space, there's this idea of a journey in everywhere you look in this home and that
connects every space. My name is Thomas Martin I'm the director at Rama Architects and I was the
architect for the Plateau Project. So the Plateau Project is located in Bilgola Plateau which is in
the northern end of the northern beaches, below us we have the Angophora Reserve and even further
below us we have the Pittwater Waterway over to the West we have the Ku-ring-gai National Park.
Our client wanted to achieve really just this sense of family unity,
the existing house was not quite there it was a little bit small so we we needed to
extend the existing house but the main driver from our client was to harness
this family resemblance and not only that but with their background in photography,
creating spaces to celebrate art to celebrate sculptures that was very important.
My name is Georges Antoni and myself and my wife Phoebe Ghorayeb own the Plateau
Project. I'm a fashion photographer, I've been a fashion photographer for the last 15,
20 years, the whole idea of building a home for our family was really about facilitating
an amazing location and foundation for my children and my family to spend time together.
The inspiration for the house really started with this Australian modernism theme which
we can see in the large living space and the expression of the rafters, but there
was a moment in the existing house which was the existing staircase which was like a turret form,
so that was something that we wanted to abstract and try to I guess celebrate throughout the rest
of the house, creating the staircase up to the first floor and then also the ensuite as
well as the day bed downstairs for the pool, we wanted to use these almost like anchors
and celebrate that idea that concept of the turret. One of our approaches in architecture
is to do with the modernist approach of form follows function so what that means
is we really need to make the house functional as a priority as opposed to it looking good,
so getting the journey right from the entry of the home into the main living space,
having that connectivity between the different bedrooms and the different rooms in the house
is far more important to us than the actual aesthetics of the house. Just off the living room
we have the barbecue courtyard which is used for many family dinners, one of the beauties of the
barbecue courtyard and the pool is that there is a connectivity through the hallway so as you come
down the hallway there's a glimpse to the left of the barbecue courtyard and then a glimpse to the
right of the pool area. One of the key features of the house is the fireplace and as you walk into
the living space you're greeted with this really tall space, so the fireplace really accentuates
that height and that volume of this area, within the fireplace we have a Stoke tall MODE fireplace.
There really is a safety aspect to having three young children and not having the complete open
fire and the MODE particularly does a very good job keeping the heat plane recessed back so we
get the full benefit of the heat but we don't have to worry ourselves. One of the considerations in
selecting the MODE tall fireplace was the amount of heat that it puts out as well creating a lot
of warmth for the main family space. Really we focused very heavily in this house on texture.
So when you walk into this house it's pretty much different variations of the one colour and
that's by design, so the idea was to create a really beautiful natural oatmeal-ly style
palette but when you look deeply and you look closer at this palette you'll see a
whole combination of textures, micro cement, render, lime coated paint, aerated concrete,
travertine, the textural palette was more important than the colour palette of this
house and the thinking was that if we create a beautiful textural palette you
can furnish it and colour it and design the other interior aspects as you would want.
We explored the idea of travertines and that gives a little bit of character into the space it's
almost an artwork in itself, the travetine being quite warm toned was a nice balance between the
otherwise light finishes in the house. Working on the Plateau Project the most proud part of
it would probably have to be the collaboration with the client, it was really fun it was really
exciting to work with an artist who comes from a different medium I think the Plateau
Project has opened my mind with regards to looking at light and shadow differently.