The Mutual Store, in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, was one of the city’s earliest department store buildings.
While the red brick exterior remains true to the original Queen Anne Revival-style design, the 14-storey building was converted into apartments in about 2006. Pied-à-Paris by Studio A.mi is one of these unique homes.
But before its recent renovation, the one-bedroom apartment was more drab than fab, featuring a poorly planned and ‘generic’ renovation.
‘The original fit-out did not speak at all to the context it sat within,’ says Studio A.mi creative director Anouska Milstein. ‘Our client wanted the apartment to feel connected to the heritage of the Queen Anne Revival style building, and I felt that a lot of her reference images had the feel of a Parisian pied-à-terre.’
Given the apartment was to serve as the owner’s city escape, the refined aesthetic of French interiors was a natural fit. And much like in those compact Parisian homes, the redesign needed to maximise space.
‘We essentially gutted the entire apartment and started from scratch,’ Anouska says.
Studio A.mi addressed the storage challenges of the 56-square-metre floorplan by creating a galley-style marble kitchen with custom joinery; a new banquette seat defining the dining area of the otherwise open spaces; and wall-to-wall shelving, providing spaces for decoration around the TV.
In the bathroom, the decorative wall panelling conceals more storage within the walls. New cornices, skirting and architraves all bring a sense of old-world charm back into the home, as does the elegant chevron parquetry flooring.
‘We wanted the apartment to feel like a blend of heritage and contemporary, using simple but bold forms with interesting materials,’ Anouska says. ‘We loved the idea of every area having something really interesting to look at.’
The entire apartment is painted in a very light, muted-pink tone, with hand-applied limewash areas for more variation. Inspired by French art deco furniture, Anouska also designed a series of custom pieces with burl accents — a trend that has picked up again over the last 12 months.
‘This was in early 2022, and we felt we were doing something quite different… but then burl became hugely popular again in 2023 — everything is cyclical!’
A series of delays and challenging site access significantly stretched out the timeline for the renovation, which in the end, took more than a year to complete. But the outcome speaks for itself. This home was always going to be an instant classic: ‘I stand behind choosing interesting materials that have existed across decades in design, because they remain timeless,’ Anouska summises.
