Accommodating an art collection can form part of an architect's brief. The dimensions of each piece are carefully measured up, specific walls designed to feature them. And when the collection includes names such as Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley and Arthur Boyd, each centimetre counts.
"We carefully measured each piece of art in the initial stages of the design," says architect Michael Holt, a co-director of Carabott Holt Architects.
Holt designed a new house in Toorak, Melbourne with fellow director David Carabott.
"Our client has several large tapestries by Sidney Nolan. One of them measures five by three metres. We had to ensure an appropriate wall was provided, as well as protecting them from damaging sunlight," says Holt. One of the walls in the home's formal living room was earmarked for Nolan's tapestry, The Death of Constable Scanlon.
While the tapestry provides an important backdrop to the living area, the architects were also mindful of protecting it from the western sunlight. A retractable steel louvre over a large picture window disappears into the wall cavity. The architects also included deep eaves (approximately one metre in width) to minimise sunlight penetration. And to allow the owners' collection to be appreciated from several rooms, the architects inserted three courtyards in their design. "You can see glimpses of the various pieces from several different perspectives," says Holt, who also included in the design an ornate 300-year-old door from China as the front door.
Nexus Designs was also given the brief to incorporate a client's valuable art collection into the house design. The owner was scaling down from a big family home into a 120 square metre apartment on the city fringe of Melbourne. "There wasn't sufficient room for all our client's paintings. But we made sure there was sufficient space for two paintings by E. Phillips Fox, a Penleigh Boyd, an Arthur Boyd, as well as a painting by John Brack," says Nexus Designs creative director Janne Faulkner.
The interior of the apartment was gutted. The paintings were integral to the redesigned kitchen and living areas.
"One of the main structural changes was in the kitchen. Originally, there was just a servery. New joinery allows the spaces to be connected. You can see the paintings when you open the fridge door," Faulkner says.
The two paintings by Phillips Fox appear in the living area, above a moss green Knoll lounge and near a deep purple Arne Jacobsen Swan Chair. The ornate guild frames of the paintings provide a contrast to the minimal lines of the postwar furniture. Vibrant green joinery (separating the living areas from the kitchen) is one of the few uses of colour in the apartment. "It's important to keep the colour palette fairly neutral when you're displaying works like these," says Faulkner, who was also keen to conceal a large plasma TV screen within the joinery. And for Faulkner, less is certainly more, irrespective of the size of a home.
"There's no need to have walls dotted with paintings. A blank wall between paintings allows the space to breathe," she says.
Elenberg Fraser Architecture worked closely with three artists at the Docklands Watergate Apartments in Melbourne. Three separate apartment lobbies feature the work of John Nixon, Stephen Bram and Kerrie Poliness. Nixon's bright orange paintings illuminate one of the lobbies, while Bram has created a lighting sculpture for his lobby. Poliness etched her drawings into wall mirrors. In addition to the art, each foyer features sculptural furniture by Edra, in oranges and shocking pinks. And if these art pieces don't create a sense of arrival, then large sculptures placed in the foreground certainly do. Emily Floyd's giant steel rabbit is impressive as is Mikala Dwyer's stainless steel letters IOU, measuring three metres in height.
"We wanted to create exciting spaces. The idea was to challenge the usual perception of lobbies," says architect Zahava Elenberg.
To heighten the experience, Elenberg Fraser clad the lobby walls with mirrors and covered each ceiling with black plastic. As Elenberg says, "The spaces feel quite infinite. You feel as though you're walking through a gallery every time you come home".