Inspired by Nature – Cape Schanck House by Cantilever Interiors
Displaying Cantilever’s signature design flexibility, Cape Schanck House sees a complete interior renovation of a beachside family holiday home. Elegant joinery sets the tone for the sophisticated design language throughout, creating a calming environment amongst the wild coastal landscape.
Since 2006, Cantilever Interiors has been tailoring Australian homes out of a workshop in Brunswick East. Prioritising design, quality and sustainability, the company ensures each hand-built joinery system meets the needs of both the project and the client. Drawing on a long history of successful kitchen and joinery projects, the team relished the opportunity to reimagine the whole interior of Cape Schanck House, a family holiday home overlooking the rugged Mornington Peninsula coastline. Here, Cantilever selected and designed all the interior elements, from the joinery to the feature lighting, flooring and tiles, paint and wall treatments, and soft furnishing.
Drawing on a long history of successful kitchen and joinery projects, the team relished the opportunity to reimagine the whole interior of Cape Schanck House, a family holiday home overlooking the rugged Mornington Peninsula coastline.
The K2 joinery system shines throughout, effortlessly blending stone and timber veneer to create a strong yet grounded palette. High quality, durable two pack joinery ties these powerful textures together in humble tones of mole grey and ghosting half. Creating seamless integration between the kitchen and the rest of the home, this palette is complemented throughout the entire interior, re-emerging in different forms and textures. “These tones reference the tea tree surrounding the property and offer the same cooling, quiet retreat from the immense sky,” says Kylie Forbes, Creative Director of Cantilever Interiors. “They also offer a base from which colour can be introduced through objects, furnishing and artworks.”
Harnessing the subtle solemnity of the surrounding untamed landscape further ties the interior to its environment. Yet, where the coastal ecosystem is wild and windswept, the same elements used internally create a sense of calm and quiet contemplation. The dark grey of fallen leaves, the ecru of the parched native grasses and smatterings of the dark tones of dry Australian soil are all captured in the design language but are rearticulated with a newfound tranquillity. These natural tones are occasionally interrupted by solid black, such as in the hanging pendant over the kitchen island that gives the impression of the silhouette of a majestic bird hovering above.
These tones reference the tea tree surrounding the property and offer the same cooling, quiet retreat from the immense sky,” says Kylie Forbes, Creative Director of Cantilever Interiors. “They also offer a base from which colour can be introduced through objects, furnishing and artworks.”
The use of textures is intended to give the interior space a sense of time and connection to the landscape outside, as light appearing through various portals throughout the day casts differing tones and shadows across each detail, punctuating the space as afternoon turns to evening. The routed lines that run up the joinery develop depth as the sun moves through the sky and tiptoes edgewise across the textured surface. The shifting light also picks up the variation in the stone benchtops, evoking the craggy coastline, while the repetition of mosaic tiles lends a sense of structure and pattern.
Considered touches such as these emphasise Cantilever’s expertise in delivering a complete vision for whole-home design through a cohesive range of services. Given new life through functional joinery systems and quality materials, Cantilever has ensured Cape Schanck House will be a quiet refuge for the clients, their children and grandchildren for many seasons to come.
