A Futuristic Design Language – Seb Brown Workshop by Sean Godsell Architects

Situated on the 10th floor of the Century Building in Melbourne’s CBD is a workshop and studio for Melbourne-based jeweller Seb Brown. Reinterpreted by Sean Godsell Architects, the overt art deco expression of the building’s heritage has given way to a futuristic design language.

Designed by Marcus Barlow as a celebration of Melbourne’s centenary, the Century Building exists as one of the city’s best examples of interwar modernism. Today, it houses a thriving creative community – an ecosystem that balances a delicate web of disciplines fostered within spaces highly attuned to the creative endeavours carried out within them. For Sean Godsell Architects, the studio’s ethos of relevance and responsiveness has culminated in an innovative, resolved space for Seb Brown that meticulously supports his exacting, artisanal practice of high jewellery design and craftsmanship.

Dovetailing the sterility of a lab with a playful take on composition and form, the space has been shaped to respond to functionality through the lens of design.

Dovetailing the sterility of a lab with a playful take on composition and form, the space has been shaped to respond to functionality through the lens of design. Via a dedication to clarity, simplicity and integrity – pillars evident across the work of both Sean Godsell and Seb Brown – the refit accommodates a workshop to house four jewellers and a separate adaptable retail space for receiving clients and performing administrative work.

Leaning into purpose as a way of informing design, a glazed wall and door separates the workshop from the showroom so that clients can look in on the jewellers hard at work. Both have been acoustically treated, as has the ceiling, so that the intrusion of workshop noise is kept to a minimum.

The remainder of the interior unfolded to temper the emerging design language.

The existing carpet flooring in both tenancies was removed and the underlying slab ground back, patched and then painted with white epoxy enamel floor paint so that precious gems and gold and silver that fall to the workshop floor can be easily located.

The remainder of the interior unfolded to temper the emerging design language. Italian-made jeweller work benches with mobile Neederman exhaust arms provide a contrasting relief to the otherwise all-white interior – an interaction of form and function at once playful and utilitarian.

Sean Godsell Architects has demonstrated via the Seb Brown workshop and studio that when reduced to an absolute minimum, design responses can unify practicality and beauty to reach an outcome that transcends both.