Hamilton’s Hottest Home Is Up For Grabs
High on the hill, this architectural wonder could be one of Brisbane’s finest.
2 min
Perched on the spectacularly private Hamilton hill, 55 Markwell street is a luxurious three-story residence boasting panoramic views of Brisbane’s CBD.
Designed by architect Shaun Lockyer, the 6-bedroom, 5-bathroom, 4-car garage residence is filled with a raft of resort-like amenities across a 2456sqm plot, only 10 minutes from the CBD and airport.
The main house offers over 1000sqm of living space and is fitted with a heady combination of timber, glass and stone achieving a contemporary aesthetic through floor to ceiling glass doors and windows, lofty ceiling heights and timber panelling.
On the first level, the kitchen well-appointed with Miele appliances, a marble island and is bordered with stonework pylons alongside a walkthrough butler’s pantry. Creating a free-flowing space are connections to the formal dining, casual dining, family room, lounge and outdoor deck area.
Additionally, on the first level is a study alongside four of the bedrooms, three of which come with ensuites.
Throughout the home, the bathrooms are adorned in a combination of limestone tiling or marble benchtops, with the aforementioned timber, stone, glass design trinity referenced.
Up the marble staircase, the upper level sees the master retreat, complete with its own ensuite, boasting twin vanities and ‘his’ and ‘hers’ walk-in robes and more impressive views.
The lower level of the home sees a private squash court, games room, personal gym, theatre and cellar, along with a laundry and yet another bathroom.
Built to entertain, the deck area and backyard host an outdoor kitchen, complete with barbecue, pizza oven, sink, built-in refrigeration and fire pit. There’s also a jaw-dropping 21-metre heated lap pool complemented by a spa and sauna.
On the technology front, the home is fitted with a C-bus lighting system, multi-zone security system with cameras and a Sonos sound system.
The residence also offers a separate fully self-contained one-bedroom cottage for the housekeeper or guests.
The listing is the Ray White New Farm’s Matt Lancashire (+61 416 476 480). POA
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
A new AI-driven account by leading landscape architect Jon Hazelwood pushes the boundaries on the role of ‘complex nature’ in the future of our cities
2 min
Drifts of ground cover plants and wildflowers along the steps of the Sydney Opera House, traffic obscured by meadow-like planting and kangaroos pausing on city streets.
This is the way our cities could be, as imagined by landscape architect Jon Hazelwood, principal at multi-disciplinary architectural firm Hassell. He has been exploring the possibilities of rewilding urban spaces using AI for his Instagram account, Naturopolis_ai with visually arresting outcomes.
“It took me a few weeks to get interesting results,” he said. “I really like the ephemeral nature of the images — you will never see it again and none of those plants are real.
“The AI engine makes an approximation of a grevillea.”
Hazelwood chose some of the most iconic locations in Australia, including the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, as well as international cities such as Paris and London, to demonstrate the impact of untamed green spaces on streetscapes, plazas and public space.
He said he hopes to provoke a conversation about the artificial separation between our cities and the broader environment, exploring ways to break down the barriers and promote biodiversity.
“A lot of the planning (for public spaces) is very limited,” Hazelwood said. “There are 110,000 species of plants in Australia and we probably use about 12 in our (public) planting schemes.
“Often it’s for practical reasons because they’re tough and drought tolerant — but it’s not the whole story.”
Hazelwood pointed to the work of UK landscape architect Prof Nigel Dunnett, who has championed wild garden design in urban spaces. He has drawn interest in recent years for his work transforming the brutalist apartment block at the Barbican in London into a meadow-like environment with diverse plantings of grasses and perennials.
Hazelwood said it is this kind of ‘complex nature’ that is required for cities to thrive into the future, but it can be hard to convince planners and developers of the benefits.
“We have been doing a lot of work on how we get complex nature because complexity of species drives biodiversity,” he said.
“But when we try to propose the space the questions are: how are we going to maintain it? Where is the lawn?
“A lot of our work is demonstrating you can get those things and still provide a complex environment.”
At the moment, Hassell together with the University of Melbourne is trialling options at the Hills Showground Metro Station in Sydney, where the remaining ground level planting has been replaced with more than 100 different species of plants and flowers to encourage diversity without the need for regular maintenance. But more needs to be done, Hazelwood said.
“It needs bottom-up change,” he said. ““There is work being done at government level around nature positive cities, but equally there needs to be changes in the range of plants that nurseries grow, and in the way our city landscapes are maintained and managed.”
And there’s no AI option for that.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
