This apartment was reimagined around a calmer, more connected way of living. The clients, a couple seeking a home that felt open, restful, and carefully considered, guided every decision. The design is shaped around the people it is intended for — calm, intuitive, and quietly harmonious.
Located within a quiet canal setting, this apartment offers generous, light-filled living shaped around natural materials. The interiors balance restraint with richness, drawing on the character of the place and the way it is lived in.
The living space is conceived as a single continuous volume where cooking, gathering and rest exist without boundary. Light reaches the room from two directions, settling evenly across it through the day.
Low seating is arranged around a rounded marble table — used just as easily for a quick coffee as a long evening in. The curtains wrap the space in a diffused light, blurring where the room ends and the view beyond begins.
The materials were kept simple: oak brings warmth, stone holds permanence, and the curtain's weight quietly shapes the light.
Folding oak doors conceal a media wall, with generous storage held below to keep everyday life quietly out of sight.
Quartzite runs the length of the working wall, counter to stove, its cool veining set deliberately against the warmth of the oak below, a quiet contrast that carries through the rest of the kitchen.
The kitchen runs along a single wall, held within the joinery, present when needed, quiet when not. Oak cabinetry keeps its grain and warmth in view, while the stone surface beside it stays cool and solid underhand.
A long stone island anchors the space, used for breakfast, quick meals, or just somewhere to set things down. On one side it opens into shelving, on the other a run of small cabinetry — together, they let it double as the quiet edge between kitchen and lounge. Nothing here is decorative. Every surface is intentional: to hold, to conceal, or to be worked on.
There is a particular pleasure that belongs only to the dining room: the slowing of an evening, the pause between courses, the chair pulled out for one more person. The moment that arrives without anyone planning for it.
For the New Wharf Residence, the dining area was given its own quiet definition within the home. A timber arch frames the threshold, marking the transition into the room and drawing daylight gently inward. Integrated seating runs along one wall, grounding the room and inviting people to gather and linger over a meal. A rounded table anchors the room, drawing conversation inward and easing the movement between courses. Slim storage lines the opposite wall, offering utility and keeping the path through the space open and uninterrupted.
A long framed art piece hangs above concealed storage, an Akari lamp completing the composition. Thoughtful details like this carry the home's architectural language into even the smallest gestures.
Every home needs a place that marks the shift from the noise of the world to the calm within. Not quite outside, not yet fully in. Arrival here is given a moment to pause: a built-in bench, wrapped in fabric and timber, sits just inside the door. Beside it, concealed storage keeps everyday things out of sight, while stone tile underfoot carries the wear of daily use.
A home needs spaces built for company, and spaces built for privacy. Further in, past the entrance, is one of the latter.
The washroom is a restful space, where the active day gives way to stillness. A generous walk-in shower and a solid stone vanity stand side by side, leaving the rest of the room open. The vanity is carved rather than built up, with a run of light timber beneath it. Soft light diffuses across tactile surfaces, softening the sharp edges of the walls and encouraging a slower pace.
The bedroom is where the day's momentum gives way to rest. It is a sanctuary where the pace of a busy life slows to a stop.
Here, this space is arranged around a single point of rest. The bed sits at the centre, held by symmetry on either side. A stone wall rises behind the bed, grounding the room and giving it a depth that shifts slowly with the light falling above. A dressing nook recedes into one corner, holding the small routines of the day without letting them spill into the room. Light filters through linen, casting a warm glow across the floorboards.
Rest gives way to routine in the space beyond. The office and wardrobe occupy a single volume, set quietly apart from the active areas of the house, as an extension of the bedroom. Each function is given its own wall, its own considered place within the plan. The desk faces the window directly, light moving across its surface throughout the day, while along the opposite perimeter, timber joinery contains the storage seamlessly within its depth.
“Home is where we wake, settle into routine, and return to rest once the day is over. It is the one space built entirely around us — where we look after our bodies, feel close to the people we love, recover, and simply unwind. Design, at its best, exists to give that kind of life room to unfold.
New Wharf Residence was designed with exactly that kind of care: a fully bespoke interior throughout, designed as a calm refuge for its owners to retreat to in a world that rarely stops moving.”