Prestige Property: 10-12 Rowland Street, Kew, VIC
A grand way of life in Melbourne’s inner east.
2 min
Built in the tradition of palatial European architecture comes this remarkable villa and its breathtaking dimensions, craftsmanship and drama.
The 5-bedroom, 4-bathroom, 4-car garage manse is located on 1979sqm of land in Melbourne’s sought-after suburb of Kew.
Here, the magnificent pile is finished with the finest imported details elevating the home to a new level of luxury.
Stepping inside the home one is immediately awestruck by the cathedral scale of the reception hall and its black and white marble floors, hand-crafted plasterwork and soaring skylit dome.
French silk wall coverings and oak parquetry floors distinguish the formal dining room – complete with a marble gas fire – while the refined executive office and fitted library feature bespoke timber panelling.
Often the centrepiece of the home, the kitchen is an entertainer’s dream featuring swathes of Calacatta marble, stainless steel work island, Ilve ovens, integrated Liebherr fridge/freezer, and a butler’s pantry with integrated Miele coffee machine at one’s disposal.
Here, bi-fold doors open the living area to an expansive undercover alfresco entertaining terrace with a barbecue kitchen, pizza oven, heaters and all-weather screens for use all year round.
It’s an opportunity to soak in the beauty of the Paul Bangay designed gardens, replete with a stunning water feature.
In the opposite wing and also leading out to the garden is a gas-heated indoor pool and spa with sauna, steam room, bathroom and gym.
A staircase leads to the main bedroom suite complete with an opulent dressing room and marble adorned ensuite.
Two additional bedrooms with walk-in robes, desks and stylish ensuites are further accompanied by two bedrooms with built-in robes and a shared bathroom.
Elsewhere, the fully fitted home theatre boasts French silk wall coverings and is complemented by the full-sized billiards room served by a bar-room complete with a wine fridge for entertaining. The basement also sees a cellar.
The home presents a heady amalgamation of old-world European charm, with grand fixtures such as Venetian chandeliers paired with CCTV, video intercom, C-bus lighting, zoned heating and more.
The listing is with Marshall White Stonnington’s Nicole French (+61 417 571 505) and has a price guide of $17 – 18.5 million; marshallwhite.com
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’
