Harbourside Modernism – Kyabin Apartment by Brad Swartz Architects

Small spaces blending wabi-sabi aesthetics and Australian modernism have become a signature of Brad Swartz Architects. This focus has been continued in Elizabeth Bay, with Kyabin Apartment taking inspiration from the client’s cultured past and structural gifts from a historical Sydney building that resembles an ocean liner.

Living in Oceana, particularly on the upper levels where a panoramic waterscape envelops your senses, feels as though you are returning to the safety of the harbour after a stint on the open sea. All apartments are accessed via long external walkways, the same as cabins on a cruise ship. ‘Kyabin’ is the Japanese spelling of cabin, and Brad Swartz Architects has layered the clients’ penchant for Japanese culture and architecture after their years of living in the country with this oceanic reference. The clients’ brief was to convert an 80-square-metre, two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment into a one-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a single guest space, whilst making the living space bigger and opening up the view over Rushcutters Bay. Form over function was a defining principle of the modernist design philosophy that informed Fry’s design of Oceana and one that Brad Swartz Architects followed into the design of Kyabin Apartment, conceiving the idea of having a central box to contain all the amenities in the smallest space possible. “Our primary goal with this project,” says Brad, “was to figure out how we could tighten everything in order to make the apartment work in the most efficient way to free up the most space in the living area and the master bedroom.”

It was business as usual until the team were about to break ground on the project, when they discovered that the slab structure of the entire building was built with precast concrete beams that had remained concealed beneath ceiling sheeting for more than 60 years.

It was business as usual until the team were about to break ground on the project, when they discovered that the slab structure of the entire building was built with precast concrete beams that had remained concealed beneath ceiling sheeting for more than 60 years. “I wish we could say that we discovered the beams and that the whole design changed,” Brad laughs, “but at that point we had our plans and saw this as an opportunity to refine the materiality in order to complement the concrete beams.” The perfectly imperfect nature of the precast concrete beams appealed to the clients and deepened the interior’s wabi-sabi undertones.

Kyabin Apartment is another wonderful representation of Brad Swartz Architects’s talent for reconfiguring refined spaces. Comparatively, the studio’s 2022 Laneway Glass House project – a studio and two-bedroom home – occupied a mere 56-square-metre footprint down the road in Darlinghurst. One common thread between each Brad Swartz Architects project is the use of a pared-back palette. “Give or take, we tend to limit our palette to around three materials,” says Brad. “This is an intentional restraint that creates a sense of calm, and to ensure the space doesn’t feel as though it’s closing in on you.” This minimal approach has been forged after years of working in cities, in proximity to a CBD where one’s home must offset the busyness and provide a reprieve from the hustle and bustle. The team’s textural exploration and choice to incorporate a mut-ed arrangement of stone and oak features beneath the concrete ensures that nothing detracts from the panoramic view and means that in years to come, if the client decides to move on, the next occupant can treat Kyabin Apartment as a blank canvas. A pared-back material palette ensures the space feels calm and minimal, despite its small size.

Kyabin Apartment is another wonderful representation of Brad Swartz Architects’s talent for reconfiguring refined spaces.

Working in confined areas has its challenges, and in the case of Kyabin Apartment, Brad Swartz Architects devised and utilised joinery to both integrate and define its various public and private spaces. A long passage of joinery embeds the main bedroom as far away from the living area as possible so the residents can physically and emotionally withdraw. The joinery also facilitates a number of reveal and conceal moments through-out the apartment, such as the guest space and its fold-up bed. The timber veneer is so abundant in warmth that it began to feed into the cabin motif, this time in reference to land. “The oak kind of ties back into the idea of it being a cabin,” Brad notes. “The timber and concrete [are] something you’d expect to find in a cabin in the middle of the woods, so there was a nice, unexpected relationship in that sense, too.”

This restrained renovation is executed with precision by Brad Swartz Architects to allow the view to retain its place as the hero. With the emphasis placed squarely on spatial configuration, Kyabin Apartment strikes a fine balance between floating above the water and staying grounded through material choices and the resulting textural experience.