In the powder room of a Melbourne home designed by Flack Studio.
David Flack, the left-field visionary behind FLACK STUDIO, brings his dynamic brand of 1980s Memphis-meets-21stcentury METAMODERNISM to a Melbourne Federation-era home — with devastatingly DECADENT RESULTS.
In this hyper-connected and tooled-up time, when any designer can magic up a folio in Photoshop and issue a press release full of self-serving hyperbole, real talent is proven in the up-close inspection of work and word of mouth.
Yes, recommendation from a trusted source, that good old-fashioned defence against the fake, has delivered Melbourne designer David Flack a big band of followers and future clients, all of whom flock, or as the designer would term it “flack”, to his Fitzroy studio after physically immersing themselves in his art.
They usually ask for the deep dive into his randomised design post-dinner-party in a “Flackified” home which, to be clear about the designer’s constituency, typically belongs to a busy professional rather than any presumed avant-garde. This patronage of an iconoclast by the ruling class is rather ironic, no?
“Well, here’s the thing,” replies the designer, as he guides a tour through a newly renovated Federation house belonging to a couple counting in the white-collar category. “This is what hard work looks like and professionals appreciate it. They are great at just leaving you to do what you do best. And for their trust they get this, the truest telling of Flack Studio.”
Standing in the middle of a formal living room whose formerly white walls have been dipped in the rich ganache of Porter’s Paints Bacio tone, Flack characterises his residential projects as “kind of like Kate Winslet — you can dress her up or dress her down, but put a lick of red lippy on her and she’s totally gorgeous and still real.”
His allusion to the British actress leads one to ask whether this living room is Kate at her red-carpet best or playing to camera in a period piece? Definitely the former, answers Flack, surveying a space set with Antonio Citterio’s body-hugging Apollo sofa, a sparkly Murano chandelier, a flash of Louboutin-red-esque leather inside a Jean Royèrereferential cabinet and the signature ‘whack’ of Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni’s bicycle-seat stool. This design concept of Kate in film-premiere persona is further underscored by Ettore Sottsass’s Ultrafragola, a neon-framed mirror emitting a strawberry-ripple glow that epitomises Hollywood glamour.
“You know I love me a bit of Memphis,” he says of the 1980s Milan-based studio that Sottsass founded and familiarised with a mash of cartoon colour, classicism and popular culture. That devotion is revealed in the new fireplace surround; a graphic border of stone set into a fluted, polished plaster wall that repeats the Memphis master’s wavelets. Either side of what Flack calls its “humps” sit deep-set, leather-lined shelves, displaying nanna-style tchotchkes next to new ceramic sculptures that echo the colours of a feature Federation leadlight.
The fruity mix of mustard, Bordeaux, olive and plum flows out of the room, down a dog-legged hallway, past a powder-room homage ››
‹‹ to Pierre Chareau’s 1930s House of Glass, into a cook’s kitchen where a monumental island bench anchors an open-plan living room and nearby dining nook. This cossetting eating corner, veiling views to a minimalist landscape of Japanese maples through netting that reminds Flack of orange bags, is furnished with an arching sweep of brown leather banquette and a brass-inlaid oak table. Both customised by Flack, the pair encompass a Sottsassstyle ‘diner’ vibe; a very high-low Memphis-mix that makes fine dining in the kitchen feel far less formal.
The designer affirms the residents’ enthusiasm for entertaining by retracting accordion-fold walls — crazy patch-workings of solid walnut dropping to a crazed palladiana terrazzo floor — to reveal machinery worthy of a Michelin-star cooking hub. The commercial kit is housed in brass units, hammered by hand, to imply an aged texture.
“Over the top, isn’t it,” says Flack of both the intensity of craftsmanship and a clash of material contrasts that counts three different colours of stone. “I didn’t want perfect junctions — to my mind these junctions are perfect imperfect.”
The reality of such exquisite contradiction is the result from a calibre of maker who can realise such seeming randomness, with a mathematical precision, using precious material. The designer leaves no doubt that his creative carte blanche came down to trusting clients and a crack crew who collectively desired the holistic work of art.
Flack wants this art fully read from an upper-level vantage point, on a glass bridge that connects old house to new addition (built by a former owner). He leads passage up a feature staircase, pointing out the balustrade’s seamless bleed of mild steel into golden brass, which whiplashes around a limoncello-coloured column at rail base.
“There are so many things going on down there,” he says, peering through the kitchen’s improvised chandelier — a hanging tangle of brass pipework that feeds power to lamps, presumed to be agricultural relics from the 1950s. “I’ve always loved [Alexander] Calder’s work and last year when I was in LA, I just kept looking at his small cord-wrapped pieces.”
Flack’s suspended salute to the kinetics of Calder and ’50s farming, in a galaxy of bits that bring light to raked roof space and service area, exerts the gravitational pull towards a story. “Where on earth did you find that?” is the refrain of guests who assume it loads with mystery. And that makes Flack a happy man — “the fact that something is not readily identifiable or easily bought but imparts an atmosphere and infers an adventure.
“You see, this is the thing about us,” he adds of an office whose next client will come from a momentary orbit in this ambience. “We’re passionate, we labour over every detail in every project, and we invest it all with love. Can’t you feel it?” And it’s that question about feeling over looking that keeps them lining up. VL flackstudio.com.au
“We’re passionate, we labour over every detail in every project and we invest it all with love”
DAVID FLACK