In this article, we learn about the vision and collaboration of a family creating their new home with Chateau Architects + Builders from inspiration, design and completion of the award-winning Kings Langley house.
The clients’ desired a modern 3 level house, a timeless design, with well-proportioned spaces and a varied palette of materials and colours.
Matt Cantwell from Secret Gardens tells us about the encouragement he received from his client, Shane Noble, to be brave and bold when designing the landscape and swimming pool for Cove House.
The iconic home, Cove House, overlooking Sydney’s Port Hacking across to Bundeena was designed in 1969 by a renowned architect, Reuben Lane. The original brief was to be bold and not constrained by the usual square and rectangular shapes.
This is reflected by the unique design of the house with abundant use of curves and circular shapes defying all the traditional rectangular and linear planes.
During the renovation of the landscaping areas, Shane wanted to match the daring design of the house with a garden with a statement that is just as unique. Paying dutiful respect to the existing design, Shane’s brief to Matt from Secret Garden was to be brave.
Our Concha Bonita Limestone meets these expectations and was supplied on a custom order. The unique “Waterjet” finish adds texture and makes it suitable for outdoor use.
The garden in Mosman received a striking facelift by Joanne Green Landscape & Interior tailored specifically to the needs and vision of the client.
When transforming the front and rear outdoor areas in Mosman, one of the most sought-after Sydney suburbs, the clients desired a classically influenced and inviting garden design with easy care and maintenance.
One of the most unique aspects of the architectural design of 60 Martin Place is its curved facade with its cantilever design that expands 8 metres above the St Stephen Church.
At Sareen Stone, we’ve supplied our Manhattan Limestone tiles for both floors and walls on levels 12, 17, 19 and 22.
TDDP architects, specialists in residential and retail design, understand that no two client’s needs and aspirations are the same. This understanding enables them to successfully unpack and interpret each client’s vision to create a version that breathes the client’s own personality into that project.
Perhaps best recognised on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame where mosaic-like Terrazzo tiles and brass stars frame the celebrities’ names memorialised on the sidewalk, the Terrazzo tile’s unique colour palettes have become an increasingly popular and sustainable option in contemporary Australian architectural applications.
A highly durable composite material, Terrazzo is comprised of natural semi-precious stone fragments in a fine white cement base made from a high quality Italian hydrated limestone cement, which forms a dense and hard material with low porosity and minimal water staining.
With a honed finish, Terrazzo tiles feature a montage of fragments of Tuscan marble, quartz, granite and glass set inside white limestone-derived concrete that can be pre-cast or poured in situ.
Terrazzo is ideal for wall or floor settings and is available in either tiles or slab. Sareen Stone offers a variety of striking or subtle Terrazzo colour combinations to suit numerous design specifications.
Ingredients are poured into large steel vats and tumbled to make the resulting material very hardwearing and dense. After it is cured, it is ground and polished smooth to produce a honed finish.
In addition to its striking appearance, our Terrazzo range carries sustainability credentials due to its use of Italian stone chips created as by-products of tile or slab-making.
A major part of the upgrade was the construction of the new outdoor dining precinct that included new granite flooring, a glazed roof, outdoor blinds, fans and heaters to allow for year-round, all-weather use. Construction of the new shopping centre precinct was completed by the team from Classic Group. Designed by Brown James Design and project managed by Nutbrook Engineering Group the importance of meeting slip rating standards for the flooring was paramount. In addition to meeting maximum slip rating requirements, a practical yet beautiful floor for the outdoor dining precinct and subsequent foot traffic was needed.
With large extended family gatherings the norm, the kitchen and galley butler’s pantry was designed to be the hub of the home and, “function like a great entertainers kitchen should with seating for six around the kitchen island, multiple dishwashers, zip tap, dual ovens and clever storage solutions for the client’s every need,” Perrie Henderson, Director.
The kitchen’s black cabinetry in Porters Aniseed is the ying against the yang of the show-stopping 3m Super White Dolomite waterfall island bench with shadow line detail taking centre stage as the main feature of the living area.
Entryway and Guest Bathroom
Natural stone was used throughout. Sareen Stone’s marble like Manhattan Limestone ensures a stunning entryway to reveal more stone – a Fior De Bosco marble clad fireplace, and Superwhite Dolomite Island and bench splashback throughout the kitchen and butlers. The master ensuite features Labyrinth Marble Mosaics and large format Calcutta marble tiles make for an elegant guests’ bathroom.
Marble clad fireplace
Master Ensuite
Our skill, our knowledge and our care.
We bring years of experience and practice in working with spaces to make the very most of each garden. Critically, we create each garden specifically for the owners – it is our care for the people and their relationship with their garden that we work to nurture and create something unique and beautiful for.
Our driving focus is to transform, delight and heal;
The garden has to be beautiful and feel at ease. It’s a multi-sensory thing – how does one feel when you walk into the garden? Does the garden bring you back to centre, breathe deeply and relax, or does the garden demand attention? Is the garden well-balanced with space and light? If the garden brings ease and the beauty draws you into it, it is a good garden.
If you take a scroll on the Landsberg Gardens website, you will see many varied expressions of what a garden can be. Rather that striving towards a Landsberg ‘style’, we actively approach each design as something completely new. We seek to understand and reveal the genius loci, the true spirit of the space, so that when it comes time to weave in our understanding of the client’s needs, desires and interests, we can achieve something that is not only harmonious, but transformative, delightful and healing.
The site is complex with many angles and levels. At the circular cobblestone car court, we needed to cohere not only several spaces but also levels, each with their own strong relationships to other elements. The perfect circles of the cobbles allowed us to impose a strong focus and order to the space, bringing everything in, holding it together and allowing every staircase and pathway to radiate from the circle at whatever angle was needed. All elements facing the circle of house, fences, planting were held together by the circle.
The cobblestone circle is a car court with a long driveway leading to it and thus also a ‘fast’ area of movement. We used the clear, perfect circle with a central point to slow and stop this overly fast space and calm it.
The hard materials need to work with the architecture of the house so that the relationship of house to garden is clear and harmonious. Having said that, the hard materials are used, as is the planting, to create particular mood and aesthetic – and to perform clear functions of pathway, terrace, walls. The plants and hard materials are chosen to work together to each enhance the other and together create a strong and particular environment. There are no rules about what materials are best with certain plants; each site is unique.
Making as many beautiful gardens to transform, delight and heal as possible!
We would prefer to look at developments in understanding which guide our design decisions rather than trends. At the moment, our understanding of the impact of climate change and environmental sustainability is growing daily and affecting our choices of both plant and material use.
Sareen Stone’s Charcoal Grey Granite step treads and cobblestones were selected for this project.
Photography by Ashleigh Lane.
