VISION Issue 17 | Page 39

39 Privacy and prospect from bedroom and bathroom. That generosity of volume and space is something to experience and is so contrary to what most apartments offer. JB: That’s it. The developers who missed out on this building were absolutely turned inside out when they learned we were only making what were essentially two-storey apartments. We could have quite easily made three-storey apartments there and tripled the size and doubled the number. Instead we elected to create these massively generous internal volumes. Did you learn anything specifically from this to take to future projects? JB: There is some quite clever retro-engineering that enabled such a large central void. Even though we had to use some mass construction and a robust structural language, there is a softness afforded by the glass canopy that trails around the void. There is a lot of layering of elements and they hold together as a strong idea going forward. It’s a very imprecise science that leads to the best auction price. JB: My view is that the best design won the day and then following it was the biggest unit. The others did well and sold and on the day we would have hoped more for each contestant.