A Refined Rearticulation – Power Street Apartment by Atelier Wagner

As a reimagining of an 1880s Italianate mansion, Power Street Apartment carves out its own sense of place and permanence through a play on volume and scale. Atelier Wagner continues the existing heritage, fused with a contemporary convenience, in proposing the articulated and refined home.

As with many larger estates broken down into multiple dwelling over the years as their size outgrew their relevance, Power Street Apartment forms part of a greater whole that is the existing mansion and retains all of the original detailing and ornateness of its previous life. Located in Melbourne’s inner east of Hawthorn, while the apartment boasts a number of original features, notably its high ceilings in part, in other parts the ceilings were overtly restrictive and changed how the home flowed and felt. As a keen focus, this re-sculpting of the interior spaces endowed a transformative approach. Atelier Wagner proposes the next chapter through a considered and refined lens, heightening the experience of the home and connecting it back to its roots.

Atelier Wagner proposes the next chapter through a considered and refined lens, heightening the experience of the home and connecting it back to its roots.

Built by Derwent Construction and Installation, Power Street Apartment is undoubtably Victorian in its detailing, and it is this attention to crafted elements that inspired the resulting approach. In order to increase the internal volume, an exploration of the existing services and amenity spaces was conducted to determine the extents to which the new spaces could punch outward. These small shifts proved an impactful resolution to a boxing out of the existing spaces, filling the home back to its originally intended generosity. A blanket of white then binds each of the existing details and the extent to the architecture, emphasising its history and making both a statement and distinction from the new elements.

Further emphasising the internal volumes is an encouraged interplay with natural and architectural lighting, bringing in and dousing the spaces with light accordingly. An optimising of the north-facing courtyard ensures optimal comfort and a lessened reliance on artificial lighting and energy. The newly imagined kitchen sits minimally in place, draped in Calcutta marble as a connection to the home’s Italian origins. The absence of hardware and fixtures aids in emphasising lines and carrying the eye to elongate the space. Supporting gestures and spaces then carry and harbour a similar philosophy of simplicity and restraint, opening up at the steel framed sliding door to the private courtyard space.

A blanket of white then binds each of the existing details and the extent to the architecture, emphasising its history and making both a statement and distinction from the new elements.

Through a return to base principles, Atelier Wagner’s Power Street Apartment realigns within its original purpose of a grand and generous series of spaces in which to live, elevated and refined.