Page 139 - 2022-07-01VogueLivingar

n a sunny Tuesday morning last year Jeremy
Bull, principal architect at Alexander &Co.,
found himself outside smashing stone tiles.
“I hit them with a hammer, threw them against
the wall and dropped them from various
heights,” he says. But despite how it might
Osound, Bull wasn’t having an angry outburst
on site. He was actually on a quest to create a perfectly imperfect
kitchen floor for a home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Wabi-sabi
carried out in dramatic fashion.
The finished floor is the lovechild of ’70s-era crazy paving and an
elegant hotel by the Mediterranean. It is made from three different
kinds of natural stone broken into irregular shapes and is at once
busy and beautiful, much like the young family who call this cliff-
top property home. The owners, who have two spirited school-aged
kids, are emerging from the slog of baby gates and nappy bins into
a new chapter; one in which they can have beautiful things without
fear of them being ruined by small Vegemite-covered fingers.
“In our work we try to be site specific, contemporary and to tell the
story of the people who live in the home,” says Bull, who worked with
associate Shelby Griffiths on the project. The resulting tale is often
about the family’s origin, as seen in this home’s Italian influences,

such as the stone thresholds. “I like the idea of marking the transition
between rooms with a moment of material intensity,” says Bull. “You
see these kinds of thresholds in old European civic buildings and
churches and they just feel so good. You could clad the entire room
in stone and you wouldn’t get as much impact as just doing the
threshold. It’s a kind of magic I don’t quite understand.”
However, the dwelling didn’t always contain magic. The original
building was built in the 1980s in a style reminiscent of a boxy
shopping complex, replete with painfully low ceilings and a great
deal of laminate in questionable colours. Bull had everything ripped
out, including all the doors and windows, until only a concrete shell
remained. He then extended the home, which required craning in
steel. “It looked like we were installing the Sydney Harbour Bridge,”
he recalls. “The concrete structure of the building was so enormous
and so heavy, the amount of steel we had to bring in to hold it up was
insane.” Thousands of kilograms of bracing metal aside, Bull says
there’s a freedom found working with concrete that architects don’t
get in older buildings. “I love both kinds of projects, but in heritage
properties it’s a voyage of discovery,”
THIS PAGE in the hallway, he says. “You’re uncovering things
custom sofa from CDF Studio;
vessel from Stylecraft Furniture; as you go, often having to pivot
Yamagiwa Mayuhana II Oval and find new solutions because of
floor lamp from Euroluce;
ll Bambino di Legno artwork historical issues. But a concrete
from Alberto Ferretti. bunker like this is so strong you ››