Metropolitan Refuge – The Mews Carlton by Ewert Leaf

On the cusp of Melbourne city’s linear grid and beside the green of Carlton Gardens, Ewert Leaf provides a restrained interior renovation to maximise the functionality of a 25-square-metre studio apartment. The Mews Carlton creatively reimagines a small footprint with unique sleeping arrangements – for both humans and pet – and a series of other considered moments designed to support, and celebrate, rituals of bathing and retreat.

With the clients’ primary residence and predominant time spent in rural Castlemaine, roughly 120 kilometres north of Melbourne, The Mews is a metropolitan refuge, a place to crash midweek when attending work events or to stay on weekends when craving a dose of Melbourne’s cultural melting pot. It was also conceived to be listed on Airbnb and shared with other visitors to the city, offering a concentrated design experience close to all Melbourne has to offer. In their hope to evoke a particular emotional response, one informed by rhythms of venturing forth to explore the city and then retreating inward to rest, the clients enlisted the expertise of architecture and design firm Ewert Leaf.

Despite the apartment’s small footprint being unified by the palatial flooring, there is a clear material delineation between the various spaces.

“I know the term ‘retreat’ is bandied about quite a lot, but it feels right to use it when describing this project,” says Josh McLean, who designed the interior along with fellow Ewert Leaf Director Ana Calic. The apartment sits just outside the structured grid of the CBD where it loosens towards the greenery of Carlton Gardens. The location is somewhat of a turning point away from the fast pace of Melbourne city and a moment of reprieve before vibrant Fitzroy opens up beyond the gardens. The Mews, conceived in response to this context, was an opportunity for Ewert Leaf to produce a space close enough to the amenity the clients require yet just outside the hustle and bustle.

The project adopts a pared-back approach and makes use of a minimal yet warm materiality to create a canvas for other standout finishes. Everything within the apartment engages the sense of touch, and natural light supports the level of ambience offered by the leathered surfaces of stone, Astra Walker natural brass tapware and handmade ceramic fittings. These understated finishes create a sensory experience that encourages an overall feeling of serenity, with placement considered in relation to its neighbouring fixtures. The predominant use of New Age Veneers timber complements the deep green bathroom; the brass plays well against the stone; and the textured finish of Haymes Artisan paint provides a fine-grain tactility.

The location is somewhat of a turning point away from the fast pace of Melbourne city and a moment of reprieve before vibrant Fitzroy opens up beyond the gardens.

An important contextual design consideration was the flooring. “Originally, we had looked at using bluestone pavers as a way of bringing the surrounding laneways into the apartment itself,” says Josh. “But we were deterred by the lack of depth and colour and instead pivoted towards charcoal-stained terracotta as a more subtle reference to the site.” The dark-stained Cotto Manetti terracotta flooring by Artedomus provides a textural finish and a unique richness, naturally becoming the foundation for the remaining palette and warm timber response.

Despite the apartment’s small footprint being unified by the palatial flooring, there is a clear material delineation between the various spaces. The kitchen, clad in blackened steel, anchors the functionality of the space, seamlessly hiding the Fisher & Paykel appliances within. Then, as one passes through a timber portal from the living area into the bathroom, an elemental saturation of green dominates. “There’s something quite indulgent about walking into that bathing space. You’ve got this really tactile and responsive deep green quartzite that’s contrasted by this grid-like glass mosaic,” Josh notes.

The Mews Carlton creatively reimagines a small footprint with unique sleeping arrangements – for both humans and pet – and a series of other considered moments designed to support, and celebrate, rituals of bathing and retreat.

Being a studio apartment, the design needed to consider multifunctional use, and the most challenging and rewarding aspect both Josh and Ana faced throughout the design process was its small spatial footprint. Whilst the bathing areas are comparatively generous, a myriad of functions need-ed to be supported within the more limited main space. To maximise the perception of volume, a new ceiling was fitted over the existing 1980s-era textured surface, and Flos surface-mounted lighting from Euroluce was deliberately placed to emphasise the ceiling height. Furthermore, careful consideration was given to the placement and functionality of the bed.

If you were to just throw a bed in the middle, you would completely kill the spatial arrangement and prevent it from being used in other ways, ”Josh explains. Embracing this challenge, the design team reimagined the Murphy bed, a fold-out sleeping solution typically deployed in tiny homes and cabins. Although intended to be discreet, Murphy beds often require an abundance of joinery to hide their components. “There’s really nothing discreet about Murphy beds,” Josh laughs. “When we decided that we were going to go down this path, which was pretty early on, we wanted to make sure that the bed was a really elegant feature, not this ugly, awful thing when pulled out.” Ewert Leaf avoided filling the space with 600 millimetres of joinery and instead devised integrated bedside tables and storage so that, when down, the bed looks like a permanent fixture in the space, and when up, it is completely concealed by linen curtains that play a role in softening the overall tone against the harder materials and textures. Tactile materiality pervades the space with a calming quality.

Aside from the retreat motif, The Mews is underpinned by the individuality of its owners and the many moments that allude to their lifestyles. “A lot of our work at Ewert Leaf is really focused on the experience. And that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve in this project,” recalls Josh. Walking into the apartment, there is a clear place to drop your keys. There isa place to set a laptop – or a cocktail – whether on the daybed, at the table or standing before the narrow cantilevered bench floating on the wall. There is even a place for their beloved whippet built into the ward-robe joinery beside the bathroom vanity and accessed by a small swing door. This is typically a dead space, but Ewert Leaf ’s inventiveness and penchant for personality allows Spud his own cosy corner and forms apart of The Mews Carlton’s essential character. “There’s a lot of those personalised moments within the apartment,” Josh says. “And that’s something seen throughout all of our work, and something we enjoy creating. Everything we do is experience-centric.”