Top trends in luxury living
As more Australians choose inner-city amenity over a big backyard, luxury living is being redefined. What are the trends at the high end of high rise development?
Starchitects once known for museums are turning their attentions to awe-inspiring apartments.
Developers are partnering with luxury brands – from cars to casinos – to bring extra cache to boutique residential developments.
And the worldwide wellness movement is doing its best to redefine luxury living. Think green wall herbariums, private juicing stations, shower heads that spritz vitamin C and high-tech circadian lighting.
These are just some of the trends at the high end of high rise development.
Gavin White, a director with engineering firm ADP Consulting is working on several luxury developments and notes several trends “linked to very specific engines in our economy”. He says growth in high net worth tourists is driving demand for luxury and boutique hotels.
“These hotels don’t just need rooms, swimming pools, bars and restaurants but an added ‘wow’ factor to attract the luxury traveller,” White says. That ‘wow’ translates into spectacular views, signature dining, rooftop cocktails and the latest in designs and finishes.
White says domestic demand for luxury retirement and aged care will also be “revolutionary”, and we can expect to see an as-yet unseen level of amenity emerging. “These facilities will be in premium locations in some of our most affluent suburbs,” he says.
Luxe life
“Everyone has a different interpretation of luxury,” says Crown Group’s director of hotels and suites Wayne Taranto. But key components include “high end finishes, first call facilities, and an environment whereby hotel guests and permanent residents can co-mingle”.
Crown Group’s mixed-use offerings bring together residential apartments with five-star apartment style hotels. Among the Group’s current luxury projects are the 29-storey V in Paramatta, Waterfall in Waterloo – replete with seven storey waterfall – and Arc, a pair of steel and glass towers soaring over Sydney’s CBD.
Taranto says luxury developers are thinking about “how to maximise space whilst developing buildings that are unique and iconic”.
Shared spaces are creating a sense of community as people trade off square meterage in their individual apartment.
“Over and above the obvious, like pools, spas and gymnasiums, we deliver library and meeting facilities, music rooms, theatrettes and spaces for kids.” Taranto says luxury developers are “increasingly seeing these facilities as essential for the modern-day resident”.
Selling the luxury dream
Andrei Dolnikov is founder and CEO of Binyan Studios, one of the world’s largest 3D rendering and animation studios that creates evocative, detailed images, film and immersive sales centre experiences for off-the-plan luxury developments, hotels and commercial projects.
“If you want buyers to see luxury, you have to put them in a particular frame of mind,” he says.
In the past, only select projects would use film to sell apartments. “Now many developers commission films of the quality of car commercials”. He points to one project with a US$1 million budget. “We are working with a fully-fledged production company that worked on Gladiator.”
For Far East Consortium’s West Side Place in Melbourne, Dolnikov’s team built an “immersion room” or “BlackBox experience for buyers” in which a “brand inspiration film” is played across three surfaces of the space alongside surround sound.
Further afield, a marquee apartment project at Hudson Yards in Manhattan created a luxury experience for high-rolling buyers by partnering with five “superstar” interior designers, who created “off-beat and quirky” designs. Binyan Studios then made virtual reality 360-degree walk throughs of each apartment “and that became a first-person experience”.
“It used to be that you made renders, put them in a brochure and stuck them on the wall. Now, if you want to sell luxury living, you have to inject the person into the environment.”