Olaver Architecture has designed a striking black grid of INAX Muji tiles to bring new dimension to the living zones of Balaclava Residence.
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For the renovation of Balaclava Residence – a narrow Victorian terrace in Melbourne’s inner city – the team at Olaver Architecture, headed up by founder and principal Emlyn Olaver, have transformed darkness and cold into lightness and retreat. Their design is anchored by a superstructure that reimagines the house as an entertainer’s haven with hotel-quality amenity.
From a limited floorplate the architects have moulded a comfortable, light-filled home that offers solace, plenty of small pleasures, and “many spots for champagne”, as Emlyn says. Maintaining the home’s traditional Victorian terrace structure, there are two rooms to the front with open-plan living located to the back. A stairway, wrapped in an origami-like balustrade of steel, connects the ground level to the upper floor ‘retreat’ with its master bedroom, adjoining walk-in robe, ensuite bathroom and outdoor terrace.
The brief called for an entertainer’s kitchen, which gave Olaver the flexibility to envisage a distinctive island bench, finished in a perfectly gridded pattern of black INAX Muji tiles. “Tiled benches can be hard to get across the line,” Emlyn comments, “but this concept spoke to the particular needs of the clients, who were not as concerned about the tiles getting dirty or being hard to look after.”
Through Artedomus Olaver discovered the INAX Muji tile, notable for its unusual satin finish. “These are tactile – not purely smooth nor rough,” Emlyn says of the black semi-matte tile finished with a satin glaze.
Emlyn views the kitchen island bench as a critical “grounding” device – the element from which other spaces will flow. With this in mind, he has used the tiled joinery to echo the overarching superstructure and cohesively tie the indoor living and outdoor entertaining spaces together.
Due to their handcrafted nature, the Japanese tiles are sharp edged, forming a crisp-lined grid which accentuated the aesthetic refrain of black geometries. Olaver was keen to maintain those perfect edges and the consistent finish across the entirety of the bench, from corner tiles to floor line.
Working with INAX, the team commissioned a series of made-to-order three-way corner tiles to perfectly match the unique satin finish of the batch of flat tiles. “There were a fair few iterations to get it to the right level of set-out,” says Emlyn of the collaborative development in which sketches were exchanged between his team and INAX’s.
Also notable is the unmarred geometry of the grid: “What you’ll notice is there are no cut tiles, the full tiles are exact,” Emlyn says. “Half a tile would have completed thrown out the idea.” In order to achieve this result, INAX provided joinery plans for the builders, to precisely suit the dimensions of the mosaic structure.
The black tiled joinery continues into the living area where a wall-mounted unit incorporate a wood stove with pop-up TV concealed behind, and a dedicated ice sink with two fridges positioned below. This flows right through to the back courtyard where the joinery integrates a barbecue, outdoor fridge and storage.
Upstairs, the master bedroom opens onto a rooftop terrace with outdoor shower, clad in earthy Cotto Manetti terracotta tiling that effectively softens the black steel grid. The adjoining ensuite bathroom with its hotel-like amenities is an extension of the gridded superstructure, accentuated by the smooth lines of Agape Sen tapware and bathroom accessories, housed within a floating column of brushed black aluminium. This sits almost as sculpture against an expanse of white INAX Sugie Series tiles (also precisely gridded thanks to right angle corner pieces being mitred to-order).
“This is why I’ve loved this project: the layers,” says Emlyn. “We’ve leaned into the grid [at every opportunity] so that everything looks considered, everything has its place. The clients had a lot of trust in our design vision and helped us get these ideas across the line.” Dive into our full Surface Edition project feature.
Words by Alice Blackwood
Photography by Tom Ross