Pipi is a beautifully sculpted residential and retail building in the heart of Bondi. Comprising 29 apartments above ground floor retail, there is something both arresting and classical in the swooping gestures of the grand vertical bays that line Hall Street. The material palette adopts coastal, sun-bleached tones of light-grey concrete, white terracotta and brick: durable materials that will weather beautifully in this harsh environment. Each façade is a study in folded planes and angled blades, animated by light falling across the pale surfaces.
Expand ContentWith a five-storey appearance from the street, the building conceals a luxurious penthouse set back on the upper floor. This maintains the established building height of the street wall, while offering the penthouse grand terraces to all sides and sweeping views of the beach and district.
Weaving a new apartment building into this site presents challenges, including limited access to winter sun, poor outlook from the apartments and difficulty making cross ventilated apartments. Effectively, the 24-metre-long street façade gives onto a 36-metre-deep site bound by neighbouring buildings on all sides, that have been built either to the boundary, or with minimal light wells in between.
The building was conceived as a T-form, where the arm of the ‘T’ faces the street and the stem runs parallel to the long side of the boundaries, creating lightwells on each side. These lightwells, with landscaped private courtyards at the base, borrow air and light to create visually and acoustically separated spaces. Our solution in the stem of the ‘T’ was to create two-storey crossover apartments, with the access corridor on every third floor providing access to the two-storey apartments on that same level and the levels above or below. As well as having an interlocked cross section, the apartments have interlocking footprints that allow different formats for one and two-bedroom apartments. This yielded many benefits including: living rooms on the sunny north-west side, natural cross ventilation, and minimal ‘pancake effect’, (where the upper-level apartments are bright and lower dark).
Additionally, there are four apartments per floor facing the street. These have been designed to facilitate oblique views down Hall Street to Bondi Beach while maintaining privacy and access to winter sun.
Setback from the street, the two-storey penthouse uses splayed off-form concrete blades to frame views and protect glass from the hot sun. The finely detailed fenestration and super-clear glass dissolves the barrier between inside and out. This is reinforced by grey travertine floors which extend from the interior to the expansive wrap around terraces on all four sides. Sculptural ceilings finished in white stucco lift to clerestory windows to create bright lofty spaces.
A monastic double-height entry lobby off Hall Street features curved walls and ceilings and is a continuation of the refined materiality of the façade. Pale textured wall and floor tiles establish the look and feel of the interiors throughout.
These finishes follow the tonal qualities of the exterior, with off-form light-grey concrete ceilings, chalk-coloured floor tiles and whitewashed timber stairs. Myrtle flame timber veneer joinery and terracotta tiles in the bathrooms provide a softening element and contrast, while remaining aesthetically in step with the whole.
Pipi has successfully transformed a constrained site into a variety of unique apartments, each with great amenity and aspect.
2021 Winner Inde Award The Multi-Residential Building
