Rousing the Traditional – Emerald Terrace by Chelsea Hing
Animating a beloved heritage beauty, Emerald Terrace brings additional life and movement to the ornately detailed Victorian-era home in Melbourne. Chelsea Hing blurs the line between traditional and contemporary, infusing a formality with a sense of playfulness and the unexpected.
Choosing to live in their restored and renovated Victorian-era terrace home before furnishing its interior, the clients of Emerald Terrace wanted to understand how they first engaged with the spaces before filling them. As part of the next stage of their occupation of the home, Chelsea Hing was brought on to assist in curating pieces that responded to how they lived within the home. Aiming to also capture the personalities and character of those who lived there, the resulting home becomes animated from the present, while the original Victorian detailing is able to remain expressed throughout, honouring its history.
A balance needed to be struck between the formality of the heritage elements and a contemporary sensibility that spoke to an open connectedness. Injecting personality throughout, there also needed to be a more refined sense of restraint to match the grandeur of the original proportions of the existing. Home to a family of five, moments of expansion and contraction allow for gatherings and convening and an element of robustness, while more intimate areas required a softer and more layered approach. Overlaying a structure and hierarchy to the more formal areas of the home allowed a better understanding of what was needed in each to facilitate them as best intended. Applications of paint throughout further help to delineate between the more open, light spaces and the more recessive, darker areas of retreat.
While not being involved in the original renovation created limitations of some proportion, Chelsea Hing’s role was to turn the series of rooms into a collective home. Through layering and understanding movement and flow, destinations are created, and the journey between each becomes an extension of purpose. Furniture, lighting and artwork all work together in their own nuanced ways in each setting, responding to both how the room was to be used and by whom. The curious bringing together of elements in the more formal areas creates moments of interest and points of conversation, while the more familiar composition in the modern areas of the home create a different settling feeling of calm, where everything seems in place.
Emerald Terrace is a conversation of balance. Emphasising how important it is that our homes reflect how we live within them, the project sees Chelsea Hing respectfully infuse light, movement and a contemporary sensibility while honouring the home’s past.
