sixhands

ISSUE 51 urbis104 ISSUE 51 urbis 105

WHAT STARTED AS A profile of Sydney rapidly became a profile of Surry Hills as every person we wanted to interview either worked or lived in this central city suburb. It wasn’t just my imagination that Sydney’s creative centre was Surry Hills; when I met furniture designer Michael Alvisse he told me about a recent talk that was part of the Creative Sydney festival where 100 Creative Catalysts, picked out as shaping Sydney, were mapped by where they lived. There were a few outliers, of course, but the cluster, with dots jostling and overlapping on this PowerPoint slide, were all resolutely in Surry Hills.

Previously the warehousing and manufacturing centre for the rag trade, Surry Hills still has remnants of its sartorial past with cheap wholesale clothing stores lining some streets. More recently, the suburb has attracted the new rag trade, contemporary fashion and textile designers like Akira Isogawa and Sixhands. Beyond fashion, infiltrating old warehouses and converted industrial buildings, the area has attracted the entire gamut of design professions from well-known architectural practices like Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, federally funded galleries like Object Gallery and smaller, independent galleries and design studios like Cesar Cueva’s Metalab and Schamburg and Alvisse. But Surry Hills isn’t all commercial, indeed the medium-density suburb seems to easily combine small-scale commercial with residential properties attracting not just a working crowd but also compelling creatives to live there as well. Writer and critic Elizabeth Farrelly is one of

these types who lives in a Victorian townhouse at the edge of Surry Hills, and writes her weekly column from her book-lined study.

It was Farrelly, as part of a larger team during her tenure on the council, that worked to put heritage controls over much of Surry Hills to insure the scale and feel of the place wasn’t dispossessed as the suburb changed and gentrified. New development then is often hidden, alts and ads out the back of townhouses, do-ups within old warehouses and small-scale fit-outs of cafes, restaurants, and retail stores show the creative contemporary direction of this inner city Sydney suburb. However, some more obvious new development has taken place, most notably the new Surry Hills library. Only open for a few weeks when we visited, the library is unapologetically modern but still manages to relate to its surrounding neighbourhood.

Surry Hills pulls away from the surf and sand magnetism of greater Sydney although that connection to the sea is still always there, from a patterned surfboard in the Sixhands studio to Michael Alvisse’s tales of his surf club. The result is that Surry Hills has a distinctive atmosphere, different from even other nearby city-fringe suburbs. The creative component surely is part of this mood, a nimble foxtrot between Victoriana and slick sales pitch, between craft and high tech, between big city and small town. Because that is just what Surry Hills is so good at: convincing you that you’re in a small village, while still comfortingly immersed in a big metropolis.

Surry Hills in central Sydney is bursting with galleries, designers and studios.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

THE HILLS ARE ALIVEWORDS NICOLE STOCK / PHOTOGRAPHS SIMON DEVITT


THIS SEEMS A PARTICULARLY Australian story: Michael Alvisse, one half of furniture design company Schamburg and Alvisse, joined his local surf club as a volunteer surf lifesaver. And while this sand-whipped excursion into the sea seems far away from the cloistered life of a furniture designer, the effect of being part of a competitive but good-natured team has strongly influenced the way he designed and wanted to interact with furniture. “So much of design is arid, conceptual, image based,” Alvisse explains. Surf lifesaving, on the other hand, is physical, often plays with life and death, and is reliant on a team in a way that isn’t often found in other aspects of life. In thinking about the significance of working with other people, Alvisse and Mark Schamburg developed Stop Playing with Yourself, a scaled-up, upholstered, Chinese puzzle that requires three people to put the furniture pieces together or take them apart.

As the name of that piece may hint, Schamburg and Alvisse products have a good sense of humour and layers of meaning. With Stop Playing With Yourself, there is the name, the simple graphic form, the Chinese puzzle, as well as the layers that aren’t so easily seen – the sustainable timber; the considered detailing and how it is made in Australia; and significantly, that philosophical question asking how a piece of furniture can prompt people to interact.

Their showroom, a somewhat chaotic mass of chairs and sofas, also has that casual, almost beachy (if the lighting wasn’t so moody) atmosphere that the two designers hope to embody in their work. This isn’t a place to be intimidated by; this is a place to flop down on couches and play.

the architecture criticElizabeth Farrelly

“I’D RATHER DIE THAN live in an architecturally designed home” is a rather incongruous admission from an architectural writer and critic. However, Elizabeth Farrelly, architecture critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and formerly the assistant editor of Architectural Review in London, is perhaps not your typical architectural commentator, not least of all because she doesn’t often write about architecture. Rather she nudges at it as she skims alongside discussing other aspects of modern society.

Her sideways discussion of her given topic is often a criticism of her work, but it is exactly this, her ability to place architecture within a social and cultural context, that is Farrelly’s true strength. Architectural writing can be limited to discussing a building as an object. Farrelly’s view of architecture is more holistic touching on architecture, as well as feminism, beauty, McMansions, obesity, and velour track suits, as in her book Blubberland. In all of her writing, despite her disaffection, at times, for architecture, or at least architects with “so much bombast and arrogance”, Farrelly holds architecture up as art.

Her derision for living in an architecturally designed house isn’t really a snipe at architecture, but rather an apprehension of another telling her how to live. A woman who was given a job at Architectural Review for her one published piece that was a crafted rant (“form dressed up as content”) about an Architecture Association show featuring Zaha Hadid, Ron Arad, and Cedric Price (the antithesis of the done thing), her career, and I imagine by extension, her life, has been decisively shaped by her independence. And independence in a critic is what the world needs more of.

THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM

TOP RIGHT: Elizabeth Farrelly’s carefully

coded notebooks; art on the walls of her

study; didgeridoos in a cluster in the hallway;

writer and critic Elizabeth Farrelly in her study; Farrelly’s

library of books.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Schamburg and Alvisse-designed chairs on display in their showroom; Mark Schamburg and Michael Alvisse; a swatch of pattern; graphic shapes are key in Schamburg and Alvisse work; a detail shot of Stop Playing with Yourself.

the furniture designersSchamburg & Alvisse

www.schamburgalvisse.com


THE NEW SURRY HILLS Library hit the headlines originally not for its design but for a mishap during construction. Mishap may seem a breezy term for the large crack that appeared in the Victorian townhouse that caused an evacuation and eventual demolition. This has created an odd absence to the right of the contemporary façade of the Surry Hills Library designed by FJMT. Along the edge where the townhouse would have rubbed shoulders with the new library is a deep grey concrete wall, the jagged line of which would have neatly echoed the misplaced building; a charcoal line drawn between the old and the new.

The library is perhaps the most obvious new building in a neighbourhood with rigorous heritage protection. Its modernity invigorates the suburb, accenting the beauty of the surrounding Victorian buildings and simultaneously casting the suburb into the future. It could be argued that its height and scale is out of proportion with the surrounding buildings, but its site, opposite a park, seems to demand a more substantial building to complement the expanse opposite. It is when the building has tried to respond to the typography of the adjoining buildings, the rooflines and veranda lines in particular, the building seems to fall short. The subtle overhang is beautifully detailed, but seems a bit miserly, offering meagre rain protection.

Inside, its contemporary feel goes beyond the aesthetics of the architecture into the very planning. There is a feeling more of a living room where you can settle in to read or work. The conservatory-like interior garden, part of its rigorous sustainability brief, completes this.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM

TOP LEFT: A dramatic interior of the Surry

Hills Library; louvres on the façade; the

street elevation; the innovative teepee-

like structure of the glass façade; the small overhang on the street elevation; a sculptural

stair to the upper floor.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

the architectureSurry Hills Library

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The wave-like ceiling form over the entrance corridor; inside the glass structure; the glass façade from outside; the stair on the first floor; the entrance with wall that would have abutted the now demolished Victorian townhouse.

www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/library/branches


THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE

FROM TOP: Brian Parkes; the round

exhibition space of the main gallery; embroidery work

by Hannah Wight; timber fashion by

Hayley Barsden; the Design Now 2009

exhibition.

I GO TO SHAKE Tim Greer’s hand when we arrive at his office, but he exclaims, “oh but we’re nearly family” and gives his brother’s nephew’s girlfriend a chaste peck on the cheek. A tenuous link perhaps, to warrant such an exuberant welcome, but Greer, partner of Sydney architecture firm Tonkin Zulaikha Greer (TZG), seems to have this infectious enthusiasm for most things, especially architecture. Indeed, his excitement for the next project isn’t dissimilar to that of an optimistic gold prospector. The allusion is apt, Greer, in discussing architecture, calls architects “societal prospectors” constantly pushing into uncharted territory.

Greer explains that TZG’s success is due to imaginative clients that have been interested in developing innovative strategies for how people may live and work. But, as he explains, it is a good architect that can see opportunities lurking within the given programme and draw them out, often creating an end result that wasn’t originally anticipated.

It is this drawing out of things that seems to be a key component of TZG work. There isn’t an egotistical dumping of a form or idea from on high, rather, their architecture is the result of sifting through the history of the site to draw out a language that responds to that site. This is well demonstrated by the recently completed Paddington Gardens project in Sydney. A site, marked by a water reservoir ruin, was to be transformed into a park. TZG suggested the clients retain the partially collapsed vaulted ruin and work a series of garden spaces around this. The new sunshades take the vault shape, albeit in contemporary materials, the result being a new chapter for this site that continues from its own history.

the curatorBrian Parkes

OBJECT GALLERY IS LOCATED within the refurbished site of the old St Margaret’s Hospital. The gallery itself was the former chapel, which does much to explain the circular, soaring room where exhibitions are now held. You could say then that Brian Parkes, head curator of Object Gallery, could be likened to a deacon of design, leading the masses to venerate the object.

Object Gallery developed from the Australian Crafts Council and like other ‘craft’ galleries around the country – Form in Perth and Artisan in Queensland – Object has renamed itself to more clearly articulate the contemporary direction of what is shown here; namely, that heavier lean on design rather than craft.

Parkes’ job is to take the huge quantity of craft and design from a wide field that includes architecture, indigenous craft, and design and sift it through the curating system to give visitors an insight into contemporary object-making. The gallery stages five shows a year, and if one attended all of them, they would understand the spectrum of work that Object covers.

Parkes is concerned with, as he puts it, “ensuring some level of currency.” This doesn’t mean showing just the new and the fresh, but to consistently present shows that allow a sense of discovery, that “are important in some way”. He is continually concerned with finding a sense of balance across the range of genres and is mindful of not leaning too heavily or too lightly on one field. When we visited, an exhibition of student design work touched on this wide range from intricate embroidery works, rooted in craft practice, through to industrial design and architectural projects.

THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Architectural models in the office; sketches of work; Tim Greer; another architectural model shows the value that TZG places on making and crafting; the open-plan office with Brian Zulaikha at his computer.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

the architectTim Greer

www.tzg.com.au

www.object.com.au


the architectTHIS PAGE FROM

TOP: A shot from the Inhale/Exhale

exhibition by artist Lan Nguyen-Hoan;

a necklace; tools of the trade; the

delicate nature of jewellery merges

into object design in this bowl; a Cesar

Cueva-designed lampshade;

Courtesy of the Artist, the retail

arm of Metalab; the exhibition space at

Metalab.

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Cesar Cueva at work; jewellery organised into magnetic drawers; the Metalab gallery; contemporary jewellery on display.

SHOPPING ON THE JOB can be difficult to avoid when your job includes visiting shops and perching out of shot in corners with little to do but admire the stock. When visiting Courtesy of the Artist, the retail arm of object and jewellery gallery Metalab, what made it even more difficult were the bundles of necklaces that were laid out ready to be picked up and strung around a neck… just to have a look.

Metalab is similarly tempting for the itchy-fingered. With the exhibition in the main display, jewellery is carefully slotted away in custom-designed magnetic drawers. To the side of this block of cabinetry the studio is separated from the gallery with a bar-height partition meaning visitors can see owner and jeweller Cesar Cueva at work. Cueva set up the gallery and studio with wife Nina Cueva in 2004 and then opened Courtesy of the Artist two years later.

Cueva’s path to jewellery design has been a doglegged route. Cueva started as an architectural draughtsman, an influence still pervasive in his distinctly architectural and geometric work. He then studied industrial design and completed a visual arts degree, which impacted on his work by adding a layered, theoretical base, particularly shown in Cueva’s interest in semiotics and word plays, and the interactions between object and wearer.

Cueva’s practice isn’t limited to jewellery. He also makes lighting and objects and while relishing the change of scale, the same perfection and minute attention to detail acquired through metalsmithing is carried through into these larger works.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

the jewellery designerCesar Cueva

www.metalab.co.au


WE ARRIVED MUCH TOO early to meet the designers from textile design company Sixhands and instead had to loaf around the streets for a while. I watched a girl in grey leggings and a gold sequinned jacket cross the road in front of us. That flash of sparkle on a gloomy morning, the exuberance and confidence you’d need to pull off that outfit seemed somewhat familiar, indeed the look wasn’t too dissimilar to something I’d expect Anna Harves, Alecia Jensen or Brianna Pike, the designers from Sixhands, to wear.

It was a pleasant surprise then, although not entirely surprising, that the girl in the sequins did turn out to be Alicia, perched alongside Brianna in shiny metallic, and Anna in a mass of pattern. The three embody what Sixhands’ designs have become known for: original, quirky and bright. The three started Sixhands six years ago, shortly after graduating from design school. Originally designing custom fabrics for the fashion industry, the design company has expanded into wallpapers and upholstery fabrics for interiors and has recently partnered with The Rug Collection to create a line of bold floor rugs.

What sets Sixhands’ designs apart is their intricate detail. The designers are continually researching the latest printing and textile technologies and their range is digitally printed which allows a level of fine detail, overlapping colour and pattern not possible with screenprinting. They love big and don’t see their patterns being confined to textiles or papers, instead imagining the possibilities of other media like casting their patterns into concrete.

Sixhands

THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM

TOP LEFT: The Sixhands designers

have a candid moment while posing for photographs; a

Sixhands wallpaper; close-up of a fabric pattern; colour and

texture on their inspiration board; Sixhands framed.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: A close-up of inspiring and interesting images to use as reference; fabrics; Brianna and Anna working at their desk; Brianna Pike, Alecia Jensen and Anna Harves of Sixhands.

the textile designers

www.sixhands.com.au


Akira Isogawa

I HAD A SONG stuck in my head. That Shakira one that just repeats, Shakira Sha-kir-a! Cue hip gyrate and round and round my head it goes. And ever since I interviewed fashion designer Akira Isogawa in his Surry Hills studio it has morphed into Akira! A-kir-a! A song entirely inappropriate to suggest Isogawa. I can’t really imagine him gyrating his hips, although I’m sure he could do a great hair flick with his shoulder-length cut; but it is his calm and thoughtful manner that is such a welcome contrast to all implied by that hyped-up pop music.

Isogawa speaks softly but with the confidence of someone who has done this many times. Since starting his label, straight out of design school in 1992, Isogawa has become one of the leading fashion names in Australia exhibiting at both Paris Fashion Week and Australian Fashion Week. His work has also been the subject of multiple contemporary art and textile exhibitions alluding to the admirable niche inbetween art, design and fashion that his work fits into.

Isogawa’s studio, though with the required sheen of mess, is in order – rolls of fabric stacked underneath cutting tables, silent mannequins waiting to be dressed, clipped brown paper patterns hung on racks. The slightly grungy, masculine feel of the space contrasts with the blushing chiffons and beading left out on the tables. His workspace is like his fashion, both structural and architectural with complex cuts but simultaneously romantic and feminine. As he says, “When I think of women who wear my clothes, I think of women that have those extreme personalities, both feminine and confident, assertive and masculine”.

the interiors store

SURRY HILLS IS HOME to Cloth, textile designer Julie Paterson’s retail showroom that sells her screenprinted textiles. Paterson has branched out from simply designing the fabrics and also uses the fabric in upholstery and soft furnishings as well as custom commissions.

Cloth separates itself from other textile companies through its start-to-finish concern for the environment. Paterson prototypes and develops all the designs in her beachside workshop in Sydney, beginning the process with drawings and paintings inspired by the local landscape. Once the designs are finalised, the rolls of fabric are produced in short runs by hand in a tin shed in country NSW. This small batch production method is an important part of the distinctive Cloth character and allows for a controllable low-impact approach to manufacturing and materials. Inside the showroom, piano stools and mid-century chairs have been salvaged from the street and junk shops, restored and reupholstered. Rough coffee bags have been repurposed into covers, the patterns overlapping the fading coffee insignia.

Throughout, the patterns use those faded reddened colours that seem intrinsically Australian: sandy ochres; dusty eucalyptus greens; earthy reds. The prints carry this sense of the local through the native motifs – abstracted flowers, grasses, and animals – but never does it seem obvious or overwrought. There is earnestness to this work, a real desire to create sustainable and locally influenced textiles, and that imbues the store with a similar sense of sincerity.

THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Rolls of fabric on display in Cloth; the screenprinted

textiles are used in cushions, upholstery

and fashion; the store from the entrance;

cushions lined up for customers.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Akira Isogawa in his studio; boxes of coloured thread wait to be transformed into garments; finished designs; Isogawa’s penchant for fabrics with colour and texture is apparent in this pile of fabric rolls; the warehouse studio.

Cloth

the fashion designer

www.clothfabric.com

www.akira.com.au


SURRY HILLS, WITH ITS heritage-protected character buildings and an influx of young professionals and young professional money, makes for a ripe site for stylish nooks to abound. With the right mix of grunge and polished design nuance, a welcome selection of interesting cafes, shops and restaurants have multiplied here.

DavidmetNicole is a small shop on a corner that sells a concise but fantastical collection of antique finds from England. Huge bowls filled with wooden type, industrial factory lamps, oversized letters, tiny porcelain dolls, and Chinese lanterns jostle for space. It is a treasure trove, but a trove carefully put together with the eye of a curator.

Fifi Foveaux’s takes its name from one of the main streets that run through Surry Hills. The frivolity of the word Fifi then gives this small café its boudoir chic look, crimson walls with original plaster fixtures and a chandelier are contrasted with steel stools and tables and, enchantingly, Philippe Starck gnome stools.

Next door is the Sparkle Cupcakery. In contrast to its neighbour, this refit has little sense of the dilapidated charm of a character building, and instead embraces slick with chrome fittings, glass and mirrors, and a pop art theme of circles.

Courtesy of the Artist, the retail store run by Nina Cueva, wife of jeweller Cesar Cueva, which, in its clean, gallery-like space allows customers to pick up the many tactile loops of necklaces or slip rings over fingers. The close connection between stock and customer lends a childlike dress-up feel to the experience. u

THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: Gnome

stools in Fifi Foveaux; the red interior with

pressed ceiling; chrome and mirrors

give Sparkle it’s required sparkle while

circles reference the round cupcakes on

display; Courtesy of the Artist; detail of

light fitting; a chain waiting to be tried on.

CITY VIEW /SYDNEY

THIS PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The carefully arranged stock at DavidmetNicole; letters and taxidermy spell English style; antique type.

the retail therapistsSparkle, Fifi Fouveau & DavidmetNicole

www.davidmetnicole.com

www.sparklecupcakery.com.au

FIFI FOVEAUX’S, 428 Crown St, Surry Hills

sixhands

Documents

profile of surry hills

edge of surry hills

surry hills isnt

new surry hills library

creative sydney festival

profile of sydney

inner city sydney suburb

central sydney