Mosman House

Major renovations and extensions to existing house

metal work design in collaboration with sculptor Melinda Brown

The original brief was to open the house to the harbor views and build a first floor extension with a viewing deck. The existing modernist 1960’s house with a flat wall of glass facing the view felt very cut of form far views. The owners liked the idea of a captain’s deck connecting with their love of sailing. The owners asked for the balustrades to be done in metal work. I invited Melinda Brown, an artist and a sculptor to design and make the balustrades for the main living room with circular plan designed to be fully opened becoming an outdoor deck. The design refers of curving organic lines of nearby branches of Jacaranda trees, landscape lines and Gaudi metalwork forms and was made using sandcasting in foundry using molten stainless steel later bent to shape. When designing the room and the balustrades Melinda made a 1:1 scale model of the room in her cavernous Hickson Road studio with balustrades made of bent wire surrounded by clay. Four folding director chairs were placed in the middle and the amazing view of the harbour was projected on the wall behind while the clients and us were sipping our sparkling wine.