An Heirloom Home – Point Piper Harbourside Apartment by Brendan Wong Design

Words by Bronwyn Marshall
Photography by Felix Forest
Interior Design by Brendan Wong Design
Styling by Brendan Wong Design & Georgia Hawkins

Imagined as an heirloom home – one connecting and resonating with its owners both now and in the future– Point Piper Harbourside Apartment creates key connections with its surroundings and its occupants. Brendan Wong Design combines nods to the building’s original architecture with contemporary sensibilities to create a calming home of respite.

Future-focused, Point Piper Harbourside Apartment sees the refurbishment of an existing 1930s apartment into a contemporary and enduring iteration. Originally commissioned by radio producer George Edwards and designed by architect Samuel Lipson, the inherited bones needed a refresh and overhaul to respond to a more open and connected contemporary condition. Combining classical references and an overarching sense of calm, the approach adopted sees a muted palette and an outward focus drive the end resolve. Brendan Wong Design creates key vignettes and connections with the surrounding and enviable views to propose a home deeply imbedded in its site and responsive to owners.

Combining classical references and an overarching sense of calm, the approach adopted sees a muted palette and an outward focus drive the end resolve.

Built by Bellevarde Constructions, Point Piper Harbourside Apartment occupies an entire floor of the building it sits within, making it both a rarity and a unique offering, one worth preserving. Intended as a family home, the brief was to create a residence that reflected its current custodians while ensuring it will remain relevant to its future owners, as it is passed through the family over time. Within its art deco stylings, the original architecture also references a European modernism which is then hinted at internally. At the heart of the new works is a central ethos of the home as a place of escape and recharge and key to this is the connection between the built and the natural. Opening up the original formal planning created opportunities to optimise spatial relationships and links to the harbour views.

A muted palette of blues, whites and greys fill each of the spaces, accented by brass detailing and other stones and timbers. The combination of a deliberate and subdued series of finishes and textures creates a combined meditative home, which is then accentuated by the natural illumination flooding in from the generous openings. Retaining a sense of formality but reinterpreting it in alternate ways sees the planning opened up and other gestures repeated to create structure and rhythm. Curved elements intersect with more rectilinear geometries, and movement in finishes is balanced with refined metal fixtures and fittings.

The combination of a deliberate and subdued series of finishes and textures creates a combined meditative home, which is then accentuated by the natural illumination flooding in from the generous openings.

Point Piper Harbourside Apartment is imagined as a home that will not only endure but which also has a considered and relevant connection to the present. Brendan Wong Design has injected elevated and heightened detailing through a contemporary understanding of space, to create a home that both appreciates and embraces it enviable context.