I'm Danica Garitzio, I am the Design Manager at McKimm, and today we are at Project 342,
The North House.
This house was designed by Lorenzo Garitzio, the Principal Designer at McKimm, and my father.
Lorenzo's vision for The North House was to celebrate volume.
When you see The North House from the street its volume is perceived in one way.
You see the feature concrete, the arches, the curves, the zinc.
As you're crossing the bridge to the front door you feel the depth of the basement beneath,
you get a glimpse at the mystery beyond, your eye-line spans across the length of the property.
My personal favourite space in the project is the sunken living room that's in the centre
of the home that draws in from all the spaces around it and that celebrates the double-height
volume, that let's the Western sunlight in in the afternoon and that has a relationship
with the staircase beyond.
This particular site is situated in one of the best parts of Brighton.
It's a beautiful tree-lined street with wide nature strips that lead down to the beach.
During the project the clients were able to add on a property to the rear which actually
became their tennis court.
The clients main focus here was to incorporate arches in the design.
The way we responded to that was by incorporating them on the front facade in a way that balanced
the rest of the home.
But also in their non-traditional sense bringing in curves in the form of circles, in skylights
and wall cut-out's, complementing the concrete and the zinc nearby.
I think this particular project is a great example of collaboration between the McKimm
design department and our clients.
If I go back to the start of the journey together, our clients brought in many different images.
It did create a flavour and a theme and I think the thing I'm most proud of is that
our design department worked hand in hand with our clients to actually try and include
as much of that as we possibly could but still try to design and deliver a home that was
functional and had great flow.
It actually shows a benefit in really listening to your clients and delivering what they want,
you know, if you look at the recycled brick on the wall of this sunken lounge room I know
that our client went and selected those herself.
And to see them in place and in-situ is a great thing for us but it's also very nice
thing for them to sit there and know they selected those bricks, that was there choice,
along with many other elements of this home.
My favourite part of this home is probably the staircase, its the core of the home, it's
almost like the engine room of the home, everything seems to revolve around that.
If you're at ground level it leads you into a sunken lounge in both the living areas.
If you're at basement level it leads you into a beautiful bar area.
The sunken courtyard here creates an amazing amount of natural light down to that basement
and that living space it actually make it.
But not only that, it's end up forming part of a really dramatic entrance that you come
in over a bridge looking down on to that courtyard.
This particular project showcases the benefits of being a design and construction business.
We can asses clients desires, needs and let them know from a cost perspective or even
an engineering perspective wether or not that's possible.
Of course we like to explore options, we like to explore everything a client wants to do,
but I guess we're in a position to be able to give them the right advice fairly quickly
without having to go through the formal process of actually appointing a builder.
The family are a very busy household, its great
to hear how the home works day to day - getting ready for school, getting ready for work,
integrating with the dogs, having their own space and private zones where they can play
musical instruments and do other things really works well here.
This home has a beautiful feel and soul to it.
The design, the flow just feels so good.
It feels like a sanctuary somewhere you just want to rest and be chilled at home.
I'm proud of the entire team for working together to consolidate McKimm's ideas with the clients
ideas and proud to see this end results here and the way the family integrate in the home.