With large archways and rendered brickwork, Jolson Architecture and Interiors’ Huntingtower Road resembles a glorious Italianate mansion of the preceding centuries, as opposed to a group of apartments. The multi-residential building, located in Armadale in Melbourne’s south-east, extends the overall feel of the streetscape it resides within, responding to the Victorian era homes on the street with a lush verdant setting and the distinctive deep arches of the building’s facade.
The building, consisting of ten apartments, is symmetrical in form, with all of them, irrespective of which level, connected to the green areas outside. The apartments on the ground floor open up to immense garden settings that are home to an array of assorted plantations, with those situated on the first floor closely connected to the treetops. As time passes, the plants will cascade from the roof to provide another ‘sheer’ for the development, the effect of being within a garden.
The apartments are not uniform in size, varying between 150 square metres in area to 370 square metres, not including the garden spaces. The arched windows and doors, create dappled light through the many birch trees and further by bespoke linen curtains. The deep 900-millimetre-wide arched colonnade not only adds architectural depth, but also responds to the changing light. These arches have been sculptured in a contemporary manner to not only interact with the light, but also create a ‘veil’ for residents, furthering privacy amongst those that live within the apartments and their guests.
The interiors of Huntingtower Tower do not necessarily resemble that of an apartment, with many features provided within apartments more akin to those found in a home. Stone fireplaces, wide marble kitchen island benches, two separate living areas and built-in cellars in the larger apartments, three-metre-high ceilings, large continuous walls to display paintings and a level of bespoke rarely seen are the big ticket items of the apartments. The design approach is mindful of carrying through the larger ideas, such as the curvature in the architecture, into the micro-details such as the beautiful detailing for the curved edge to the vanity pull or the carved undercut to the vanity basin in the marble bathrooms. The result is a coherent design story whether you happen to be inside or outside in the garden. The external materiality carries into the interiors beyond the unusually wide window sills to further extend the garden experience indoors. Ultimately, these choices made by Jolson have created a feeling of immense grandeur, and ensures a luxurious living space, irrespective of floor area.
Crafting an interplay between the rhythm of sculpted arch forms, organic qualities of the verdant plantings and luminescence of natural light, the Huntingtower Road Apartments coalesce to create high-quality living environments. Jolson have clearly been meticulous in their approach for creating the apartments, and it has bore fruit, for architectural practice and residents alike.
