Visiting One Barangaroo with Babak Moini

In the following interview, More Space meets Babak Moini and designer David Hartikainen, Head of Interiors at Space, for a tour of the apartment and a chat about the collaboration.

More Space: Thanks for inviting us into your home Babak. I get the sense that working on this apartment has not only changed the way you see design, but also the way you live?

Babak Moini: At first I had no idea what furniture meant. I thought a table was a table until someone gave me a Space gift voucher and I ended up with two of the most remarkable chairs I'd ever had. I thought wow, this is amazing. This is so good to sit on, I don't want to sit anywhere else. Around the same time I watched the series ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’. I saw his home and thought, why can't I live like Versace? So I started experimenting with different items of furniture and the only logical place to go was Space. Now when people ask me what I do for a living I say, I believe I'm an interior designer! That’s all I care about (laughter). My mind, my eyes, and my soul have opened up to design.

Did that help you in terms of seeing something in this building that perhaps you might not have seen before?

BM: Initially what got me was the full range of facilities here. I thought wow, you can get room service, you have valet parking, there’s a concierge service, there’s the heated pool and spa and all the restaurants. It's in the heart of the city and it has an incredible view. What I didn't realise was how grand this building would look. So it's the architecture of the building with a twist in the design.

That twist also describes the eclectic collection of design pieces you’ve chosen.

BM: I gave the designers artistic freedom to do as they wanted. I’d like to think I gave them the liberty to be designers. I don't think I said no to anything, I said more of everything! It's not like I'm a couple and I had to put it to a committee. I was happy to take risks and what I said to David Hartikainen and Matt Cecchin at Space, is create something that no one else has done before, and they've nailed that brief.

David Hartikainen: Yes, when we started the conversation I remember Babak saying he wanted to challenge us to create something unique. So with that direction we were able to do some very interesting things.

In terms of that collaboration, how did the design adventure take shape?

BM: When I bought this place, Crown Residences gave me a list of suppliers and the key supplier on that list was Space. They had worked on apartments here so knew the building and understood its flow, and I thought brilliant someone who knows exactly how the building works on the inside. I think my brief was relatively brief. I wanted something glamorous and very liveable, that was designed for entertaining and for the night. The opposite of what I have at my house in Mosman. It has a lot of colour, pinks and purples. Here, I wanted something different.

DH: I think the great thing about working with Babak was he understood that the view was all encompassing so he wanted to look at how we could make the interior equally as remarkable.

It's a didactic combination of materials, textures, colours and objects.

BM: Every item is aesthetically pleasing but now that I've lived in the space, it also flows very well. The fact that we're sitting down in a talking circle with the organic shape of the On the Rocks sofa that follows the shape of the building, guests can sit on either side of the sofa and still see the view. Whether I have designers visit, or people who’ve seen other apartments in the building everyone says, ‘Wow!’

How do you want people to feel here?

BM: I want guests to have a unique one-off experience, one they haven’t had before. But that's not just the furniture experience, it’s everything. The food that comes through the butler service, the bar people who make their drinks. It's the way the living room and the dining room and the rest of the house feels. It starts when they walk through the front door. People don't know in which direction to look. They see the incredible view but the inside is also compelling and around every corner there's something to discover. I would have had 60 dinner parties here already and on every occasion people are looking more in than they are looking out. They’re just blown away by what they see.

How important was Space’s deep knowledge of design?

BM: It was more than that. Space has furniture that nobody else has. They have the most unique pieces and for this building I needed those pieces. Then it goes through to the depth of their design experience. I like the fact that I only had to deal with one provider and one team who created the whole thing.

DH: The challenge of Babak’s brief allowed us to go deep inside the collection. Having that trust also allowed us the freedom to look at pieces in a different way. We could also work with the manufacturers to create things that we hadn't done or thought of before which was very interesting.

You are referring to the commission for the Sydney Table. How did the design develop with Edra?

BM: I was looking for unique pieces and I thought of Edra’s Baghdad Table. David suggested we should do a one-off Sydney version and from that conversation the table was created. There are now more conversations about this table than any other design piece here.

DH: From the start, Edra was very open to the idea. I went through old archival maps of Sydney and I knew we had to find a map that had good geometric shapes we could translate into the form of the table itself. Once we found the right one, the conversation turned to, ‘well where do we cut the map up? What's important?’ It then took shape around the natural landscape, the beautiful curve of the Bradfield Highway and the main artery of the harbour, revealing itself as we worked through the design. I then left Edra to develop the design further. After three months they sent us a series of rendered drawings with fine lines outlining the shape of Sydney. I presented it to Babak all wrapped up in a box.

Was that a standout moment?

BM: Yes it was, along with the moment when the Space team set up the entire apartment, and by set up I mean they even put on the bedsheets and pillow cases, arranged the books, the magazines and every object. When I walked in every piece was a knockout, I didn't know where to look. It was like I’d been hit by a series of wows!