Prestige Property: 2 Lomond Place, Castle Hill, NSW
This luxurious pile hopes to break the suburb record.
2 min
Perched on an elevated position, this three-level, 7-bedroom, 6-bathroom, 5-car bedroom home in Sydney’s Castle Hill captures district views of the famously leafy locale and hopes to break the current suburb record when it goes to auction on December 18.
Located in one of the suburbs most prestigious streets comes a magnificent double-brick masterpiece offering modern grandeur and endless luxury across an impressive 2000sqm block.
Within the home sees grand proportions throughout, further emphasised by the broad tiles used underfoot and the elegant bulkhead detailing above. These modern details combine with the wrought iron staircase to lift the eye and create a sense of space and drama in the home’s foyer.
Beyond the entrance, replete with chandeliers, the home sees palatial formal living and dining areas alongside an open plan living and dining space.
It’s here that the gourmet kitchen, replete with Miele and Smeg appliances, forms the focal point of the home. The ground level sees a secondary kitchen – that acts as a butler’s pantry – complete with a full suite of appliances.
Elsewhere, the home boasts a billiards room, study and home cinema.
Upstairs sees the accommodation, including the 7.4 x 7.9-metre master bedroom, complete with a walk-in-robe and ensuite – the latter adorned with marble details.
The remaining bedrooms all see walk-in robes or built-in robes as well as balcony access for each room.
Outside, the home is privy to a large entertaining area with travertine tiling.
Here, one finds the impressive in-ground pool and shaded lounging area alongside the floodlit championship-sized tennis court and basketball court, making the home ideal for entertaining.
The lower ground level plays host to the five-car garage and guest accommodation, complete with bathroom, kitchenette and separate entrance.
The home is listed with Merc Real Estate’s Mechlenne Douaihy (+61 434 548 435) with an auction set for December 18. Price guide $5.8 million; mercrealestate.com.au
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’
