SMALL BUT MIGHTY.

A few years ago, 2014 to be exact, a pioneering new development in Melbourne was the talk of the sustainable architecture landscape of Australia. The Commons Brunswick was one of the first buildings of its kind in this country to be purpose-built to encourage a balance in communal versus private residential space. In an era that is constantly dominated by digital means to communicate and socialize suddenly there was this proposition that we return to a more old school form of socializing. A return to basics that has proven to be an incredibly successful housing method evident in the demand for more throughout the world. 

One of the latest projects just about to break ground is The Commons Brunswick’s younger sibling - The Commons Hobart. 

The Commons Hobart pictured on its proposed central city site in Bathurst Street, Hobart.

Like her older brother, The Commons Hobart is being developed by Small Giants Developments who in turn have joined forces with local architects The Core Collective to get this project to completion. 

I’ve been researching this project for an editorial piece over the past couple of weeks and the whole thing has become a bit of a passion project and fascination to be honest. Like most, my social and professional life is pretty much dominated by technology. Add to this, 2 very young babes and a partner at the whim of hospitality hours and you get a pretty airtight cocoon. Not unlike pretty much everyone I know this social “norm” we’ve created wasn’t something I often questioned (sure I crave a human face and wouldn’t be half the person I am without actual contact with friends and family) but somehow the way I conduct so much of life via a screen was compartmentalised into a different part of life - until recently. The ease with which projects like The Commons have slipped into our ideas of urban living and multi-residential design is somewhat of a relief. It’s projects like this that will help pull the wheel as the metaphorical car driven by our social conscience careens towards the cliff, pulling us around just as we started to pick up speed and giving a little much needed traction to the way we live our lives as neighbors. 

Garden plots on the communal rooftop at The Commons Brunswick. Photographer Andrew Wuttke

Living spaces will take full advantage of natural light and clever layout to cancel out the need for air conditioning. 

Interior joinery design is refined and considered.

Like its Melbourne counterpart, The Commons Hobart will have an enviable urban location and views that will sweep across the city and the quiet constant of Mount Wellington in the background. 

All renders courtesy of Small Giants Developments 

STRADDLING THE STRAIT.

A few months ago we made the big move over the strait from Melbourne to Hobart. A Melbourne girl born and bred I've happily trekked the globe and embraced long-term (2-3 year) stints in both London and Berlin, each time returning to the mother city that I love the most. This time, however, the move was a necessity rather than a choice per se so came with an entirely different mixed bag of emotions.

London and Berlin are both global cities with their own definite 'brands'. Working in the creative industries, both places were a no-brainer when it came to considering the effect living in these cities would have on my career. Single and fancy-free, I embraced both places and returned home to Melbourne with loads of new friendships, career highs and - after Berlin - a boyfriend in tow. 

So where was Hobart going to fit into this life of mine? How was I going to engage with its people and creative underbelly with 2 babies at home, no social network and a boyfriend who was busy building up a new bar and off hitting his own career highs every evening? Slightly overwhelmed I did the only thing I feasibly saw possible and dove right in with gusto.

5 months have gone by and I am thinking over those months while sitting in the comforting fold of Melbourne's inner northern cool for a couple of days. This is my third trip across since our move and, whilst I LOVE popping back to Melbourne and touching base with family, oldest friends and valued clients - I'm beginning to realize that the idea of a work/life balance that simply alluded us in Melbourne is strangely within reach in Hobart. The city has a peacefulness and a proximity to...well...everything that makes a day made up of equal parts family and work achievable rather than a massive race to the end. 

Lifestyle aside, the sheer beauty of Hobart's Waterfront, Battery Points ridiculous charm, the hugely flourishing creative pulse of the city (growing all the time thanks to the pioneering fabulousness of places like MONA, initiatives like Dark Mofo and MONA FOMA, the ever-growing buzz of the growing restaurant scene and crazy cool design of every aesthetic from the striking beauty of Satellite Island to the sustainable cool of Macq01) and the strangely comforting constant of Mount Wellington's shadow have definitely crept under this Melbourne girls skin. 

Huge thanks to Sweet Natured Photography for capturing these moments as we settled into our new home 5 months ago.

FOR LOVE OR MONEY.

After graduating from a well known Melbourne based University with a BA in Interior Design while ago, I got it into my head that I wanted to learn how to actually, physically build things! Shock horror but, positives aside, I felt that this was a badly neglected area of my 4 years spent at Uni in a course that equipped me with plenty of conceptual skills but not much by way of the practical. And so began a longstanding passion for furniture design and carpentry. 

My first role, with a truly salt-of-the-earth artisan furniture maker, was the instigator of this passion. Arteventa, based in the back streets Melbourne's Prahran, was the kind of place that exuded a charm and honesty that only timber really can. 

Working with a small team of ridiculously talented boys I learnt the ropes by way of the end process and discovered a talent for furniture finishing and the (almost) lost art of french polish. In nearly 3 years spent with this tiny yet powerful little company I experienced a business renaissance and when many friends were losing jobs left right and centre in architecture firms thanks to the dreaded GFC, the value of solid, well-built fit outs meant Arteventa forged a niche building commercial interiors at extremely high standards for some wonderful clients.

Barbagello Trattoria Melbourne by Arteveneta

Izakaya Den Melbourne by Arteventa. Image from Concrete Playground

I left Arteventa for another passion and after a few years spent traipsing around Europe I returned to Australia and once again found myself drawn back into the world of furniture design. I dipped a toe into finishing again when my first bub was a few weeks old and then found myself on the marketing and retail side for another Melbourne based artisan a few months later.

El Lobo was far removed from my heady days at Arteventa - which were steeped in learning traditional techniques balanced against pioneering commercial design - being very new and green when I first came on board. There is something wonderfully exciting about working for a person or place that is full of promise and only at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey.

Custom furniture by El Lobo

Designer, Ceren, with a background in film production, brought a whole new mindset to her design methods that I found wholly liberating in a place like Melbourne where the design world can be decidedly trend-driven and repetitive at times. El Lobo gave me the space and freedom to surround myself with unique and considered designs from a passionate designer right a time when I was needing to reestablish my career goals in between having babies. 

Sitting here writing this in retrospect, I realise that one of my foremost professional passions lies in furniture design and the nostalgic smell of resin and turps still gets my heart pumping. One day I will work a lathe again and stain the antique chair that sits as a rather ugly duckling under a mound of clothes in the corner of my bedroom, but for the moment I am focusing on the valuable lessons learned from years working for love rather than money and the journey of passion that working with furniture designers (and many other creatives) has unleashed.  

xx