Fluidity it's the way we work, and we like to
mould shapes and architecture a little bit like plasticine.
I'm Luigi Rosselli,
an architect and I am in this new house that we renovated which we call the 'Hearth In The Well'.
This house is perfect for Luigi Rosselli Architect and Arent & Pyke because it's very eclectic,
it's got parts of 100 years old, parts which are 20 years old and they're all valuable,
they're all very good, and we have added a layer, so it's like a geological dig you got all
these layers and they all work well together and that's the positive aspect of this eclecticism.
My name is Sarah-Jane Pyke I'm from Arent & Pyke and we're the interior designers for this house.
This home is on the Northern shore of Sydney Harbour in the Eora Nation.
When you arrive at the front door of the house you're greeted by one of the oldest
parts of the house in the hallway, as you come through the first thing you see is the
beautiful spiral staircase, when you get to the top of the stairs there's a long hallway
which overlooks the garden and along there we have five bedrooms and three bathrooms.
And then as you keep moving through, you arrive here at the sunken lounge which extends into
the kitchen and dining beyond, all of that's bordered by a beautiful lush tropical garden.
When we were first brought onto this project there was a beautiful design
by Luigi Rosselli Architects already in place so we knew we were working with this
incredible fluid form, all the spaces had been gorgeously organised and we
had already a beautiful idea of what the ceiling and the fireplace would be like.
Our brief was to inject all of the colour, materiality and personality into the space and
to work really closely with the clients to make a really family-centric home,
where everybody would feel comfortable and they could really live and enjoy the house.
The major part of a brief was to move the garage away from the central part
of the house and free it to become the link between the living spaces.
So we came with the idea of creating a sunken living room and that then
generated this idea of having a fireplace, one of those very warm and welcoming spaces.
We introduced the fluted travertine around the edges of the fireplace to really bring
that texture into that space, and to show off the curves of the form.
The space we're in here in this beautiful sunken lounge is bathed in light during the day,
and we really wanted to create something that felt glowy, warm and textural all the time. We
started to layer up this beautiful soft paint colour, and then all of the textures and the
soft furnishings here really emphasise how cozy, and warm and comfortable this space is.
The kitchen is another great example of beautiful craft and strong materials in the house,
we needed it to function as an incredibly robust family kitchen and the granite benches and splash
back are brilliant for that, but we also wanted to gather the family and we've created the Pyrolave
bench top as a dining space at the end of the island that really brings everybody together.
Part of the design there was also the addition of the of the new stairs,
it was an existing, very pokey, narrow, small stair and we removed and opened
it up and we wanted to bring light into the centre of the house to the stairwell.
My name's Nick Acquroff, I'm from S&A Stairs and we made the stairs for this project.
We've been making stairs in Australia for 102 years now,
we're a fourth generation family business that was started by my great grandfather.
Having started working in Sydney in just the last three or four years it's been incredible
to start working with an architect like Luigi Rosselli, his understanding of form
and fluidity and detail on every architrave, in every corner of the home is something that we
really admire and is obviously such a huge part of what we've always done which is curved staircases.
There's several techniques that we use that exist virtually nowhere in the world,
one of them is kerf bending which allows us to build stairs like these in our workshops
and then disassemble it and take it back to site.
It really is a dying art form and it's people like Luigi who have really brought
it back into vogue and allowed us to keep developing the skills for the next generation.
It was lovely working with S&A Stairs they designed the continuous handrail,
it's very difficult to have a smooth elliptical
curve into handrail and they were able to do that with no issues.
The positive outcome of this project is that we've been able to work with an existing building and an
existing valuable architecture without ruining it, without overpowering, and very subtly work with it
and in a more smaller scale, it is a beautifully crafted object and place to live for a family.
The proudest thing for us are the people that work on all of these jobs and it's
this sort of environment that allows us to execute the vision of architects like Luigi,
which I think is what made this project so special.
My favourite part of the house is possibly the master ensuite,
it's got an incredible serene calm, the light just glows around it and the stone is dreamy.
My favourite part of this house, is here, in front of the
fireplace, in front of the sunken lounge. I feel very comfortable here.