We have recently completed the project AURA with AQUALAND. As we reflect on the design journey, we cannot help but feel the essential, deep role of a design story and how beauty, as a concept, is not just something you can touch but something you feel.
Located at 168 Walker Street in North Sydney, AURA is a mixed-use precinct featuring luxury residential spaces and world-class hospitality.
From the very beginning, the concept produced by Woods Bagot traced the lines, the verticality, the forms, and the softness. Paying homage to the eroded coastline of Sydney’s North Shores, AURA was born as a vision to elevate the living experience through a curved, glassy, curated, and activated structure. Every element is a reflection of this story, meticulously designed to honour its origins. The beautifully curated interiors possess an intrinsic elegance that allows light to explore new dimensions and hues; an elegance that invites exploration and living.
As (wayfinding) designers, our role is to add character, to provide the accessories, the jewellery that completes the outfit, the final touch. As we engaged in conversation with the project, our approach to fusing Poetry and Geometry was embraced, working in unison with all involved, including a fertile partnership with Woods Bagot and Richards Stanisich.
Our story emerged organically from dialogue, inspired by the architecture and respecting the built form. As we made it ours, we aimed to honour the purity of creation inspired by nature, reflecting the sculptural elements and materials that impose their presence with gentle curves, soft details, and crafted lines.
Through our conversation with form and environment, we unearthed a treasure: a way to encapsulate the quiet power of natural creation. Reconnecting with this purity, we admire the pearl as a symbol of natural wonder that has inspired humans since time immemorial.
Embracing the concept of the pearl as ‘the first of all precious things’, we developed a solution that blends art and design, harmonising with the surrounding environment. The result is a sinuous design, a carved shape that offers a moment to reflect on the immortality of stone. It is a vessel of meaning, infused with poetry.
From creating custom apartment numbers that illuminate the corridors to sculpting stone elements that enhance the sense of place through the external directory, we invested our energy in designing something meaningful, connected to the story, in celebration of beauty.
A celebration of beauty, something we need now more than ever.
AURA presents a unique opportunity for the community, combining the magnificence of the environment with the fulfilment of human needs.