PAINT IT BLACK
Dark, sensuous, earthy tones prevail in this sleek, refurbished Melbourne apartment situated in a former Depression-era shoe factory
When you challenge Fiona Lynch to settle on a word that encapsulates her concept for the refurbishment of an apartment within a converted shoe factory, the interior designer settles on “painterly”. It certainly describes her engulfing groundwork in black, her masterful manipulation of chiaroscuro and the seemingly brush-worked textures of materials, but it also betrays her holistic schooling in aesthetics. Lynch studied the history and practice of fine art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) before side-stepping into the University’s department of interior design. According to the buoyant Lynch, the sensual pleasure of painting soon gave way to the intelligence of design because the structuralist in her kept surfacing. “I was always constructing space in my art back then,” she says of an era that encouraged conceptualism over working on canvas. “I studied painting together with architect Charles Wright. He claims that my current interiors are just like my student paintings.” Referencing “the preferred masters” who plumbed black to its emotional and formal depths — Caravaggio, Goya and Picasso — Lynch says that she chose “pitch” for this Fitzroy project because it fitted with both the backstreet grit of the suburb and the brief issued by her client. “He just walked in off the street one day and announced himself as a New Zealand pastoralist,” says Lynch. She misheard his occupation as pastor — “I thought, my God, he is a priest.” She established an instant rapport with the 50-plus farmer and discussed his recent real-estate buy in terms of his dislike for beige, his desire to house lots of books, his expectation of beautiful craftsmanship and the need for guest bedrooms. Lynch duly went to inspect the property with this prospective client who, referred to her by his New Zealand friends, confessed to owning few furnishings and favouring extreme sports. “You know he climbs Everest,” she says, stressing the need to match his robust daring to her design. “And he swims with sharks.” The scouting trip revealed a Depression-era factory that had been converted into living spaces by Australian architect Ivan Rijavec in 1989. His Russian Constructivist floorplan (all skewed geometries), double-height glass atrium and sensual sculpting of planes into amorphous space were still in evidence. “But they had visibly suffered from the previous owner’s interventions, which didn’t appeal to the farmer,” says Lynch. “He just trusted us completely; he was at no stage didactic or demanding.” Lynch and the project’s lead designer, Sophie Lewis, began by rejigging Rijavec’s curves into more square-set space, rounding some corner edges in deference to the architect’s signature swoops. The resultant modularity, nodding to the late 1970s, was realised in
a limited-but-rich palette, with stained American oak, honed stone and black paint prevailing. The existing concrete floor was bush-hammered and left bare, the entryways were widened and fitted with solid core doors and extra distance was contrived between the dining space and the guest powder room — “more acoustic separation an absolute essential”. New windows were installed on the atrium’s living-room side; their black powder-coated frames mounting new vista onto the refreshed courtyard. Lynch further cleared sight and traffic lines across the groundlevel’s inner living rooms and outer atrium by removing the existing cocoon-shaped kitchen and instating an island plan with a stone bench at its centre. When paired with a range-hood in oxidised brass, this monumental block of honed black granite would abstract into a mountain range under the golden glow of a morning sun. Such rich conceptualism necessitated a craftsman builder, says Lynch, singing the praises of Scott Burchill: “His attention to detail pushed the design to another level.” The subsequent demolition of the kitchen freed a boxed-in column that Lynch part-wrapped in rubber cord (homage to Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s 1939 Villa Mairea), the matte black colour of which would determine the stain for a new bookshelf. This metaphorical cliff face, indented with collections of books, is scaled by a customised ladder. It peaks in the first-level study, where the double-height ‘crevice’ creates the perception of a larger space. Lynch articulated an adjacent bathroom as a luxury cave, scaling black in tint and texture from cold Nero Marquina stone to earthy ebony to the warm matte of Boffi’s ‘Morocco’ mosaics. Most would be too scared to have such a fulsome crack at this non-colour, but the farmer dived further into the deep with furnishings. “We took him shopping for a whole day,” recalls Lynch, itemising the resulting selection of pieces that run the gamut of black from Jean Prouvé’s mid-century ‘Potence’ lamp to Rodolfo Dordoni’s modern Strand sideboard. “He absolutely loved the experience and now enjoys trawling for vintage treasures.” Lynch is chuffed to have sewn the seed of a new passion in the pastoralist, but doesn’t think it likens her to a farmer. “Yes, we both apply art and science to data, but I don’t have the worry of lightning strikes.”
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