Coastview Apartment

Designed in the early 1960’s, Coastview Apartments is a modernist tower sitting precariously on the cliff edge at Diamond Bay. Our brief was to remove the many layers of unsympathetic additions and open up the once three bedroom corner unit to conceive a space for single occupancy. To do so we began experimenting with elemental forms, placing objects within the floorplate, each bringing utility to the plan.

Our proposal removed walls and rooms to create one coherent space with a central, elemental core housing the bathroom, kitchen storage, and robe. This transition from a rooms-based plan to a more modernist open plan allowed all the spaces of the apartment to experience the immediacy of the sheer ocean cliffs, water, and horizon.

The single core element contained and concealed existing services running vertically within the tower building.

With the tight scale of the core we explored miniaturisation as a theme, dimensioning passages and thresholds to their absolute minimum, creating a micro-world of contained interior spaces as a contrast to the open and generous spatial experience of the main apartment interior.