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A Coastal Hideaway – Ashley Street by Akin Atelier
Hidden amongst the trees above Sydney’s Tamarama Beach, Akin Atelier’s Ashley Street project was conceived as a private hideaway with a strong connection to nature that, through the deliberate layering of old and new, takes on the quality of a humble coastal cottage.
The brief was driven by two key imperatives – to create a tranquil sanctuary for the client, who is based overseas and splits her time between Sydney and other locations, and to preserve and exhibit the history of the house. “Our design intent was to capture the nuances of our client through textures, time, and history,” explains Kelvin Ho, Akin Atelier founding director. “As a renovation, rather than a new build, we began the design process by defining the elements we wished to retain and developed a strategy around modernising the home without it feeling forced or faux. Ultimately, each design decision was made with one central concept in mind – it had to feel authentic and collected. We wanted to avoid any elements feeling overtly new,” he says.
Kelvin cites the duality created by the need to preserve the home’s original heritage identity and also layer new contemporary additions as one of the project’s central challenges, yet Ashley Street makes the combination of the old and the new appear natural and effortless. Emphasising the fact that embracing the original building was key to successfully overcoming this challenge, the house wears the new elements with an ease and relaxed sense of comfort that can only be developed over the passage of time. “The Ashley Street project wasn’t designed to read as a new project,” reflects Kelvin. “Instead, the design intention was for the home to feel like one that had had many incarnations and iterations over the years to reflect the unique style of our client.”
In order to both sensitively introduce the new works and also connect the home to the surrounding natural environment, Akin Atelier created a “classic sequence of rooms that leads from the kitchen out to the deck, exposing views of Tamarama Beach and out to the Tasman Sea,” Kelvin explains. The kitchen is purposefully designed as the core of the home, with all other areas leading to this point, including the north-facing courtyard which becomes part of the kitchen through the inclusion of full-height steel-framed doors. “From the kitchen, you are able to see through a series of portals and living spaces to the ocean vista, with the cooktop specifically placed on the island for the client to enjoy the water view while cooking,” Kelvin says.
Emphasising the fact that embracing the original building was key to successfully overcoming this challenge, the house wears the new elements with an ease and relaxed sense of comfort that can only be developed over the passage of time.
For the client, who loves to entertain friends and family, the kitchen needed to be a “beautiful and purposeful space,” Kelvin says. As the central core of the home, it encapsulates the project’s approach to the relationship between the new and the old elements. In the shaker-style cabinetry, open shelving, and use of “whale watching-blue”, the design references and pays homage to the cosy informality and functionality of a traditional cottage kitchen. Yet simultaneously, Kelvin says, “the insertion of contemporary architectural elements – Flos architectural lighting, custom steel-framed doors, and contemporary object and furniture selections – give the home it’s duality and unique balance.”
Akin Atelier specified appliances by Fisher & Paykel to achieve this balance, with the ability to fully integrate the appliances into the cabinetry key to crafting the identity of the kitchen. The particular composition of the kitchen reflects the choice and distribution of the appliances, with an integrated French door refrigerator located within the continuous run of tall cabinetry. The double DishDrawer dishwasher and CoolDrawer refrigerator are also invisible, hiding amongst the lower cabinetry, emphasising the flexibility of these products that are designed to function as drawers. With the double DishDrawer enabling smaller dishwashing loads, it uses less water, energy and detergent, and gives the added benefit of offering just one drawer to be used or both if required, such as when entertaining. Meanwhile, a 900mm induction cooktop and 900mm wall oven were chosen, with the larger capacity providing the client’s desired level of functionality.
The Fisher & Paykel double DishDrawer dishwasher and CoolDrawer refrigerator are also invisible, hiding amongst the lower cabinetry, emphasising the flexibility of these products that are designed to function as drawers.
Kelvin explains that the appliances “being able to be fully integrated has a major impact for this particular open kitchen that is heavily equipped to suit the client’s needs. The open kitchen is presented beautifully and is highly functional with the majority of [the appliances] integrated behind the joinery doors and drawers – more than half of the cupboards are concealing Fisher & Paykel products.” He further explains that the project was Akin Atelier’s first full Fisher & Paykel kitchen and “the integration of the products was seamless. As Fisher & Paykel is design sensitive, they provided us with a thorough walk-in experience in their showroom, as well as detailed specification sheet for integration and installation for the joiner.”
Just as the kitchen references the home’s heritage in the palette and design of the joinery, the material palette and selection of loose furniture, artwork and objects were key to referencing the home’s seaside context and the “client’s eclecticism and sense of curiosity.” Mangrove buff sandstone paving (cut on-site), New Zealand wool carpet, custom-stained floorboards and natural stone emphasise a “relaxed sense of coastal ease and the blue-moon marble is a reminder of the rivers in New Zealand,” Kelvin says. Akin Atelier worked closely with the client to curate the collection of furniture and styling pieces that balance the home’s coastal identity with an “eclectic yet contemporary mix to punctuate the style of our client,” he explains. “The objective was for the home to feel like it had been layered over the years with pieces collected over the lifetime of the home. 1950s French kitchen barstools, 18th-century column lamps and Baroque 19th-century Spanish dining chairs are used as a backdrop to underline the contemporary accents and tie in the modern architectural elements.”
