Thirty years in the Melbourne design scene has afforded Shareen Joel a reputation for design that’s “explorative while remaining steeped in longevity”. Shareen’s portfolio of retail and commercial projects is supplemented by an expanding portfolio of residential projects – some residing in the city, others on the coast. Her most recent residential project lies on the Mornington Peninsula and is equal parts elegant and casual. What started out as just a garage and pool to accompany the clients’ main house has turned into a pavilion-style home with living amenities and ample room to entertain.
Versatility and Simplicity
“A lot of hard work went into making this home look simple,” Shareen says. “It can be utilised in so many different ways and never seems to look exactly the same; it’s full of surprises.”
The design and layout are centred around family life. The open-plan living-dining-kitchen space means that furniture and objects can be easily re-arranged to cater for a vast range of activities. A clever use of said space, Shareen has opted for a single kitchenette-style bench that expands the entire length of the back wall, ensuring occupants are never closed off from one another.
Utility and Robustness
Shareen describes the home’s material palette as “utilitarian” and “robust”, where functionality takes precedence, followed closely by aesthetics. Being by the beach, hard-wearing, easy-to-clean floors were a requirement. Terracotta tiles met this criterion while blurring the line between inside and outside (an effect compounded by fully operable glass doors and windows). With this as her base, Shareen selected timber to soften, marble to refine and art to enliven.
Garage House
The client’s cars are in themselves a work of art, hence, the emphasis on the garage. The unconventional, integrated layout of the garage, whereby the furniture and cars sit side-by-side, is intended to isolate the cars from their functional purpose and represent them as ornamental objects designed to be admired from a close-up. Making the garage accessible from multiple points streamlines the entire experience.
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