‹‹ Noting that he was single when living at No 99, Hargrave admits
that he can somehow zero in on the impending zeitgeist but is prone
to boredom. “I mean, while they were working on that apartment,
the guys from Colliers [real estate] told me I had to look at this.”
He recalls his first visit to the display suite, where a scale model of
the 44-floor Bates Smart tower showed permit-compliant setbacks
on level 19 and the penthouse peak. These recessions in the building
profile created atypically large outdoor spaces — a bonus that the
19th floor further rewarded with nearly four-metre ceiling heights
(thanks to the corner siting of a service core).
This built allusion to the Big Apple had Hargrave at “huge terrace
and high ceilings”, so he bought the entire 19th level, negotiating the
cost down to compensate for the fit-out of the five apartments
intended for its floor plate. He then commissioned KPDO to create
a ‘house’ within the Bates Smart construct and briefed landscape
designer Myles Baldwin to build a Roman-style rooftop garden.
During the four-year design and construct, Hargrave met and
married Storm, a striking brunette whose name belies her nature
and the serene effect she has had on Hargrave’s expletive-edged
decorative world — polished plaster walls, leathered stone and
rough-sawn oak boards being more recuperative than revolutionary.
The biggest issue for KPDO, aside from redesigning around
changing circumstance, was the balance of diametrically opposed
requirements for both intimacy and a city outlook in a glass box
scaled to contain five residences — a challenge further exacerbated
by the arrival of baby Goldie.
Planning the L-shape apartment with deference to the down-
below city — a rational layout with connecting laneways provoking
surprise encounters — architect Stephen Javens and interior
designer Kerry Phelan (coprincipals of KPDO) contrived a series of
sliding wall sections and a palace-worthy enfilade of doors. These
openings control the wraparound reward of Melbourne from every
compass point in a compound that sequences main wing, formal
living and family wing.
Long, low slabs of neutral sofa seating and a generous 12-seat
stretch of dining table discreetly fill formal rooms, deferring all
colour and contrast to interior art (persistently at the anti-modernist
end) and outer Treasury Gardens.
“Greg wanted more of a family home,” says Javens. “But this place
still had to facilitate his legendary parties. It’s a little-known secret,
but we will share it with the world: Greg is a great dancer.” VL
kpdo.com @kpdo_studioTHIS PAGE in the kitchen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Four Seasons bar stools for Knoll Studio from Dedece;
Memphis-style objects from owner’s own collection; Pietro Russo Hubble Space hanging lamp for Baxter from
Criteria; granite in Arabescato, Amazonite, Norwegian Rose and Viscount White. OPPOSITE PAGE in another view
of the kitchen, appliances by Gaggenau and Sub-Zero; Tom Dixon mortar and pestle from Dedece.