This article was originally published in our print magazine, Habitus #65.
YSG Studio has ridden a four-storey industrial corner warehouse conversion in Redfern towards a glorious sunset. Built in the early 1900s, it has recast the building’s more recent incarnation as a contemporary art gallery, and minimal residential quarters into rancho relaxo, given its wild Western flair. Featuring flexi co-working zones and meeting rooms, generous break-out spaces including a kitchen, dining area, lounge room, outdoor entertaining terraces and a crash pad for guests, it is a modern fairytale setting that straddles both the domestic and commercial realm.
High desert meets urban oasis, weaving the sand-flecked tones of internal walls and intricately carved and decorated timber joinery together with custom patterned rugs and woven textiles heroed by sky blues, cactus greens and sundown shades. “The tonal contrast was intentional, so the jewel hues of the soft landings really zing,” adds YSG’s Director, Yasmine Ghoniem.
The owner, who was raised in South Africa, named the building Cinderella House, after a late 19th-century goldmine located on a South African Farm. It was coined the Cinderella Deep Gold Mine given its attraction to trailblazers eager to explore its promise of life-changing wealth. Fittingly, Cinderella houses a diverse collective of top tier entrepreneurs and business people who meet to exchange ideas. Ghoniem recalls her client’s upbeat brief, requesting “good energy with lots of opportunities to engage – a place you want to linger longer within and feel right at home.”
Nailing it, there is nary a whiff of a conventional corporate environment given it features an enormous internal courtyard where films are screened. Even its slouchy, patchworked canvas seating with frayed trims by Dutch sustainable design innovator, Piet Hein Eek, nods to cowboy bedrolls. A pizza oven (crowning a tiled pedestal base) keeps all happily ensconced come nightfall when the rest of the city trudges the commute path home.
“We gutted the levels, adding new steel doors that lead to external balconies, studding them with orbs to relieve the angles of the rectangular footplate,” adds Ghoniem. Across levels, timber joinery features these baubles in beaded rows, including the horizontal handle of a Murphy bed sequestered in a cosy lounge room that flips down when colleagues fly in. Bathrooms were also remodelled. One is fired in a deep terracotta red, while another features a trough-like floating vanity crafted from Opus Rosso marble, as though mined from the site.
On the top level, a long walkway leading to the client’s private office is pierced with a row of kaleidoscopic portholes, creating a sensory experience of light within. “The inspo came from our client’s wife’s coloured Perspex sculptures that we sprinkled inside. We also added an oversized circular window around the corner in his office, though I’m not sure if the tempting walk-in-bar located on the other side of his desk was such a good idea,” she adds with a chuckle. Its drinking ledge extends out onto a private deck.
Throughout, Southern Texan country themes creep in, elevated by an intelligent, rustic charm. The central courtyard’s towering walls feature a hand-trowelled hemp render flecked with straw. Flowing indoors, it adds textural relief to other surfaces. Above the lounge, Ghoniem fitted chunky, hand-beaten timber rafters stained a rich bourbon shade, cladding woven raffia between them. Further rejigging the scale of the generous room, a massive U-shaped lounge with deep seating sits beneath, accommodating casual think tank sessions. Above a custom log-milled coffee table, an oversized raffia pendant hovers like a well-worn sombrero.
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End grain timber blocks stained a pewter blue shade relieve the largesse of the kitchen island, tempting fingertips to run across their mismatched grains, as do the hand-pitted timber bookends of the custom dining table. Blurring indoor/outdoor divisions, a tiled internal datum of agave green and black tiles flows into the courtyard, creeping up to a sunshine-yellow-tiled seating platform to frame a soaring, potted cacti. Enhanced by glass garage-style doors that roll up in the warmer months, the space invites casual coffee meetings and lunch gatherings.
Custom rugs crafted by the studio’s long-term collaborators, Tappeti, brings the concept of the high desert landscape home. Ghoniem tapped into the patchwork quilt designs of Folk Fibers for inspiration (founded by an American college mate now based in Texas), adding her panache for colour pairings to enliven their woollen fibres. One features sandy planes spliced with greens and apricots, inspired by the client’s Piet Hein Eek desk comprising stacked scrap wood panels. Another, representing a desert night sky, is pure black magic as its luminous pastel markings depict satellite mountain ranges. “Both feature uneven edges and undulating surfaces, just like a hand-stitched quilt,” she adds.
The living room’s rug features bolder patterns. “Rhythmic geometric Mohave designs inspired its bright turquoise diamond-shapes – the colour traditionally represents water and sky,” explains Ghoniem. Looking closely, Mojave symbols are sprinkled across tactile fabrics – from the stepped outlines in the U-shaped lounge’s fixed skirt and the zig-zag motifs and trims of select window treatments, to tangerine chevrons animating a corridor of padded storage cupboards. Upholstered vintage armchairs and scatter cushions feature tessellated rectangular grids and woven stripes, while Tuareg rugs repeat diamond shapes, enhancing kinetic flow.
So intricate is Ghoniem’s attention to detail that stepped Mojave forms ripple across timber joinery fronts, while concentric circular cupboard pulls feature lightly stained timber shades including Cinderella’s subtle accent colour: silvery sky blue. “The zebra grains on the blonde birch wall panels and the darker swirling burl veneers offset these symmetrical patterns. So do Dirk Van Der Kooij’s Chubby barstools and chairs that look like they’re shaped from large Crayola scribbles. I also love the Allied Maker timber totem and matching sconce in the living room. They’re like slithering desert snakes,” she shares.
Reviving the weathered private deck, Ghoniem simply patched rotten planks, sealing them in a creamy clay tone invigorated by orange and brown stripes. “They sync with the geometric tiles that trim the walls with a modern-day take on Mojave motifs.” Indeed, this project is the ultimate pumpkin-to-carriage transformation.
