Black Moon Rising Apartment

Posi­tioned in the heart of an inner-city sub­urb, the Black Moon Ris­ing Apart­ment takes inspi­ra­tion from Melbourne’s laneway cul­ture and vibrant hos­pi­tal­i­ty scene. For the clients, the new home rep­re­sents a shift to city liv­ing and they were excit­ed to bring those ele­ments into their design and espe­cial­ly want­ed to inte­grate the feel­ing of being at a glam­ourous lux­u­ry hotel or fine din­ing restaurant.

A dark, moody palate offer­ing a sur­pris­ing lev­el of warmth and spa­cious­ness allows the own­ers to live and enter­tain in a com­pact envi­ron­ment that is com­fort­able, refined and craft­ed for a sense of plea­sure. A palette of mod­est mate­ri­als is used in unusu­al ways, lay­er­ing var­ied tex­tures and colours to build a rich­ness through the home. Hov­er­ing above the stair like a moon, an oxide treat­ment cre­ates a dark­en cir­cle with­in the hand worked plas­ter to give the project a sense of iden­ti­ty and mem­o­rable expe­ri­en­tial qual­i­ties like you might see in a posh din­ing venue. 

The apart­ment fit out sits with­in a new­ly con­struct­ed four sto­ry shell on a tight inner-city site, with very restrict­ed inter­nal width and access to light. Work­ing with the avail­able nat­ur­al light and adding a pro­gram of sleek arti­fi­cial light­ing con­tributes to both the feel­ing of spa­cious­ness and the hos­pi­tal­i­ty atmos­phere by cre­at­ing dra­mat­ic effects high­light­ing sheen and texture.

Giv­en space con­straints, and stor­age require­ments, walls are replaced with join­ery units to define areas. The join­ery is used to pro­vide 3 dimen­sion­al objects of beau­ty that define the pro­gram by replac­ing walls and allow­ing light and tex­ture to slide past each oth­er cre­at­ing an illu­sion of depth and size. In par­tic­u­lar, a three storey join­ery unit lines the open stair­case, estab­lish­ing cir­cu­la­tion spaces, allow­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty in the pro­gram­ming of adja­cent spaces and pro­vid­ing a dra­mat­ic link, tying four lev­els togeth­er. At every lev­el it con­nects and defines an open space, ful­fill­ing a vari­ety of functions.

Black Moon Ris­ing explores a design approach infus­ing a hos­pi­tal­i­ty-like aes­thet­ic with a func­tion­al res­i­den­tial space, result­ing in a rich duality.