Anthony Denman:
So you came over from England, is that where you grew up?

Lian Hancock:
That’s right. Yeah, yeah, I grew up in London, North London. My father was an architect, so he had a practice in Camden Town for 30 years, but his business partner was Australian, a guy from Sydney. So growing up, we always had some sort of connection to Australia through him. Strangely, my dad’s best friend at school also migrated to Australia. So his business partner’s Australian, his best friend was living over here in Australia. So we came over as kids a couple of times on extended trips, which was unbelievable. Got these amazing memories of being down on Bondi when I was like 10, 12 years old.
So yeah, we always had that connection. And then later on, my older brother was the first of my siblings to come over. He was traveling around the world, ended up in Australia, tried and tested tale, especially for many Brits and decided to stay.

Anthony Denman:
Was he an architect too?

Lian Hancock:
He’s actually a designer. Yeah, so he ran a design house in Sydney. There Design?

Anthony Denman:
Yes. Oh, all right.

Lian Hancock:
So Simon had … Yeah.

Anthony Denman:
Are they still around?

Lian Hancock:
Unfortunately, my brother’s become ill more recently, so he’s had to move away from the business, but the business still operates.

Anthony Denman:
Because they were really creative. I do remember when they came onto the scene and they were going next-level creative, doing things very differently. Which is awesome to see because the category can be somewhat formulaic.

Lian Hancock:
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Anthony Denman:
They really broke the mold to-

Lian Hancock:
Good starting point for me to come over and see him because he was working with lots of architects at the time. I actually started life in Sydney working out of his studio, just doing a few things for myself, creating contacts within Sydney. I came out here originally while I was studying for a year. So I did some work then, that was in ’98 and then moved over permanently in 2003. And yeah, worked in a number of the largest scale practices in Sydney for a while and ended up joining Brian and Kevin. And yeah, it’s been good.

Anthony Denman:
You guys own the eastern suburbs. So every single, almost like every new project, what’s going on there? How come that’s the case?

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, I think Brian’s got a lot of well-established connections in the east. And I think the combination of his historical contacts and then a new breed, if you like, myself, when I came in, I brought in a number of other guys that had worked for me elsewhere and they had a lot of experience in apartments. So it was this marrying of luxury single dwellings and a bit more commercial acumen for apartments. And the market at the time has really benefited us. It was just good timing that the market was demanding more from apartments. Cost of land in the East is so high that what apartments are brought to market have to be exceptional to get the sale rates that they need.
So yeah, we’re very fortunate that a lot of the work in the east is word of mouth, and references, we’ve got very good contacts with the councils, approvals, strategies that type of thing is always a big part of development. So again, that’s another aspect that’s in our favor.

Anthony Denman:
You live in the eastern suburbs too, don’t you?

Lian Hancock:
Yeah. I live in Bronte now. I’ve always lived in the east. I lived in Bondi for many years and then moved to North Randwick and then now to Bronte.

Anthony Denman:
How did you go moving from Bondi to North Randwick?

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, that was … Again, probably, it’s a path world trodden where young, free and single live in Bondi and then you have responsibilities, you have kids, you get married, you need more space. So that was the start of that journey, wanting to live in a house as an apartment, needing a bit more space. It was great actually. It was really nice because I used to live in North Bondi and I think one of the aspects living, especially in the northern end of Bondi, is that it takes quite a while to get out of Bondi. So you end up spending a lot more time there than you’d like to because it’s amazing. So it’s a blessing and a curse.
But having moved out to North Randwick, you’re equidistant then to all of the eastern beaches. So all of a sudden, we were going to Maroubra, Little Bay, Coogee, Tamarama, Clovelly. So yeah, it was actually really enjoyable. And it eventually led to us moving to Bronte, because again, you’re equidistant to a lot of those beaches. You’re not tied to one or-

Anthony Denman:
So you definitely wanted to be in a beachside suburb?

Lian Hancock:
Absolutely. Having grown up in North London and always been very interested in sport and outdoor activities especially, a very big reason for coming to Australia was to integrate that into our lifestyle. My brother was living in Jacques Avenue. The first year I was here, I was living with him on Jacques Avenue. Once you live that far from the beach, you’re never going to go too far away. So yeah, it was always within … A big part of living here is that work-life balance and coming home after a day’s work and feeling like you’re not on holiday, but you’re somewhere that has a feel of holiday about it.

Anthony Denman:
There’s definitely something about the urban environment dissipating into a natural one.

Lian Hancock:
Absolutely. Yeah, I’m a big believer in surrounding yourself in nature as much as possible. Even though we live and work in a cosmopolitan city like Sydney, it’s very important to get amongst nature as much as possible.

Anthony Denman:
Do you surf?

Lian Hancock:
I do, not particularly well, but yeah, I enjoy everything to do with the ocean. So swimming and surfing and bodyboarding and wakeboarding, I used to do a lot of wakeboarding. So yeah.

Anthony Denman:
Where’s your favorite place to swim?

Lian Hancock:
Now … I used to live in Bondi, so I used to swim a lot in Bondi and that’s amazing on an amazing day. If you do the point-to-point swim in Bondi, nothing better, but now, time is a bit more precious. I’ve got more responsibilities. My windows of opportunity are fewer and far between. I swim in Clovelly a fair bit just because it’s very close to where I live. I love Gordon’s Bay. That’s one of my favorite spots. That’s a very hidden, I think, a bit of a hidden gem.

Anthony Denman:
It is-

Lian Hancock:
Yeah. When you walk around that part of the coastline, you genuinely feel like you’re somewhere else. So that’s nice if I ever swim there and-

Anthony Denman:
Yeah, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Most people wouldn’t know that living at Bronte just as close to Clovelly as you are.

Lian Hancock:
Yes.

Anthony Denman:
Yeah. To the beach that’s just over the hill. I think we talked about this in our brand workshop. Do you have a preference for, say, Tamarama, Bronte over Bondi?

Lian Hancock:
Now, at this stage in my life, I do have a preference. However, I think Bondi, as opposed to Bronte and Tamarama, they’re quite different personalities, depending on where you are in life. And also even now, it’s actually quite nice to dip into the vibrancy of Bondi, the busyness, the activity. It’s nice to dip in and dip out, as opposed to be surrounded by it all the time. As you get older, more of your life becomes about work and work-life balance. I appreciate being able to relax on the weekends. Bondi at a particular time is not necessarily relaxing. However, I’ve got two boys. They love nothing more than going down to Bondi. So yeah, they’re both amazing places and they’re both quite different, I think, even though they’re so close in proximity.

Anthony Denman:
Always felt like Tamarama and Bronte more of a village atmosphere.

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, I think so. I think it’s definitely less transient. The people that you see in Tamarama and Bronte are all locals, whereas there’s a lot more fly-ins or tourists in Bondi, which is amazing and really interesting and fascinating.

Anthony Denman:
Speaking of relaxing, I think one of the words that really resonated with me in our brand workshop when we’re talking about Halcyon was sanctuary. And I felt that really that name really resonated with you also.

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, very much. I think going back to what I said earlier about one of the amazing things about living in Sydney, especially in the eastern suburbs is you can work in a very international city like Sydney in the day, and at night, you can go home, live by the coast. There is a sense of respite and refuge I think when you live by the coast and I’ve always felt that air of sanctuary wherever I’ve lived around that area. Being by the oceans is a real leveler. If you had a hard day, you go and just jump in the ocean and it puts things into perspective. I feel like this idea of … I think everybody that lives in the eastern beaches feels that degree of sanctuary to some degree or another. So I always felt like designing Halcyon was always … Given the nature of the location and the abundance of space on the site, it would be great to really amplify that idea of sanctuary and have it imbue as many aspects of the project as possible.

Anthony Denman:
What I found really interesting about Halcyon was that the footprint of the building takes up what about 50% of the-

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, approximately.

Anthony Denman:
And I don’t think there’s another … Apart from some of those houses on Thomas Street, there’s no other building blocks really that aren’t close to zero lot allotments, right?

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, no, very much so. It’s a very unique site in that regard. A lot of the building envelopes that are generated are defined by development controls and those controls are somewhat defined by the context of each given site. And in this particular instance, the context is such that it generated controls that led to a large part of the building being located towards the front of the site towards Andrews Avenue. However, there is a laneway to the rear and the site is quite deep and there is an L-section at the rear. So there’s almost like an additional portion of land at the rear that we genuinely saw it as an amazing opportunity to maximize the amenity of that land and we’ve really pushed the idea of the landscape design and that goes back to the idea of it being a sanctuary. A sanctuary is a space where you’re surrounded by nature, you are screened and buffered from your neighbors and the abundance of landscape and housing helps to do that. It also gives the opportunity to provide really generous and luxurious communal facilities. So quite often in these buildings, space is at such a premium that the communal facilities are often harder to provide abundant communal facilities. Whereas in Halcyon, we’ve got a beautiful common pool and landscape area. That’s again, also slightly detached from the private dwellings.
So again, it really helps with that privacy between private dwellings and communal facilities. But yeah, as I said, the abundance of land in comparison to the footprint of the building really allows us to heighten the landscape. And what that does is it enables us to screen, green screen and naturally buffer from the neighbours, offer luxurious and abundant private gardens that come off of the ground floor units, but then also provide significant communal facilities as well. I think that space around the building footprint helps to inform how you see the design of the building. It’s less about a piece of sculpture in adjoining context and more about an integration of that piece of sculpture in its own landscape that surrounds it. It certainly informed how we thought about the design of the building itself. One of the things that was talked about earlier was, “Wouldn’t it be great if this building was seen as a series of pavilions?”
So treating apartments is one of the big things with apartments is, “How do you design apartment building where everybody gets a sense of ownership and identity to their apartment?” So we felt with a design of only eight apartments on such a building, it would be great to break down that building to read as a series of pavilions, so to speak. That’s easier said than done, but that kind of led to this idea about breaking down a building form in a landscape. So it was a very soft transition between nature and building.

Anthony Denman:
Pavilions, I think it was 1923, the Bondi Pavilion was designed. And what are your thoughts on the architecture of the Bondi Pavilion? Because it feels like we’ve been doing something that you probably haven’t seen yet. We’re exploring … So we photographed the pavilion, the Bondi Pavilion and now what we’ve done is we’re exploring the 3D model and we’re finding these synergies that, when you place them side by side on a page, it’s quite remarkable. Some of the synergies, was that deliberate?

Lian Hancock:
It certainly wasn’t deliberate, but I would say that the Bondi Pavilion is a building and a series of buildings that work very well on that pedestrian scale. It’s quite low rise. So a lot of the architectural – fenestration of arches and colonnades is a very nice environment at a pedestrian scale to navigate between. And I think, at Halcyon, one of the ideas around the design is that there is this almost podium base to the building that ideally reads as a piece of stone that is carved out. So there are softer arches that allow for sheltered colonnades, spaces to private outdoor dwellings, outdoor terraces. So I don’t think there was a deliberate attempt to reference the pavilion, but maybe buildings like the pavilion are in our psyche because we’re always around them and they’re … And the other thing is that it has a significant heritage value. So if anything can come of that, it would be nice if there is that sense of heritage and establishment to Halcyon. I would like to think that that kind of sense.

Anthony Denman:
Yes, it is probably in your subconscious. What about the North Bondi Surf Club? That’s been redesigned more recently, but we’ve seen synergies there too.

Lian Hancock:
Yep, North Bondi Surf Club is amazing building. It’s quite different in its context to Halcyon. I think they both reference their location in terms of the coast, the coastline. I think probably the North Bondi Surf Club more directly references the bay of Bondi in its scoop and its front elevation. But more broadly, that building is, I think, seen as a piece of sculpture that is carved out, that is very much a building in the round. Whereas I think at Halcyon, I think the architecture is probably one more of it’s less immediately obvious, it’s more of a gradual understanding of the building because it’s surrounded by so much landscape.
But look, in terms of the general language, there is a softening to the forms, a softening to the materiality, but I think both buildings probably reference the coast and the materiality of the sandstone coastline.

Anthony Denman:
Which is what, that was like a big inspiration?

Lian Hancock:
Very much so. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, I think we wanted to reference the fact that you are so close to this coastline, the natural undulations of that coastline, predominantly sandstone, but then different degrees and variations of erosion of that coast creates different patterns, different textures, different tones. It’s something that I think we do on a number of our buildings in this area that we try and incorporate that richness of texture and tone. That doesn’t necessarily overtly reference the coast, but it’s more of a subtle sense of a similar language.

Anthony Denman:
What’s more important to you, texture or tone?

Lian Hancock:
I think, in this instance, because as I said earlier, we really tried to articulate the building mass considerably insomuch as creation of these pavilions or breaking down that singular form as much as possible, that we didn’t feel that the building needed to be additionally articulated significantly through tone. So rather than using overtly different materials and contrasting tones, we always had the idea that the articulation and the breaking down of the design of the building would be a formal thing, and then the overlay of the materiality could be a much more subtler differential.
So in this instance, I think texture is actually really important. We’re using limestone as the predominant material, but we’re applying it in different ways, so different scales of formats and then different textures. And that, again, we’ve seen on other projects, also offers an opportunity to get a very interesting plays of natural sunlight and daylight across those facades. So yeah, in this instance, they’re both important, but I think the texture of the different aspects of the architectural aesthetic is probably not more important, but it’s more significant in the facades than the tone. The tone varies more subtly.

Anthony Denman:
It’s really quite unusual to have the entrance from Andrews Avenue and then you’ve got another entrance from Glen Lane, not often, I don’t think, could be wrong in the Eastern suburbs where you get dual points of entry. And what’s really interesting to us and I think to you too, to Kirsten as well, is that the foyer that becomes a site through link has so many different applications.

Lian Hancock:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think we always, again, going back to the idea of more land around the building, it was an opportunity to graduate that threshold between outside and inside and public and private. I think we always thought of the entry sequence as a meandering pathway that you work your way through and that the distinction between when you move inside the building wouldn’t necessarily be so clear and distinctive. So insomuch as the entry foyer is, we like the idea of it being a continuous pathway through the site and that opens apertures at either end in a reasonably deep footprint. If you can open an aperture at either end, it offers good opportunity for sunlight and daylight and fresh air to come into that space.
And again, that amplifies the idea of having the levels of amenity of an outdoor space, but you’re sheltered from the weather, a foyer that connects all the way through the depth of a building. But it also connects those two landscaped areas, the front and the rear, again, hopefully exemplifying it as an area that is pseudo-internal-external.

Anthony Denman:
Because you also access the individual homes through there too, don’t you?

Lian Hancock:
Correct. There would be private entrances to the ground floor units, but yes, anything above the ground floor, you access off of that spine, that central spine.

Anthony Denman:
What about those garden apartments?

Lian Hancock:
They’re incredible. We’re seeing this more and more. There’s an appetite for apartments with house-like proportions. So again, the two obvious points to do that are typically on the ground where you can provide appropriately sized gardens to go with those units or at the penthouse level where they’re typically set back in the building footprint, which allows more continuous and larger external area. The ground floor units here, they’re incredible. They run north to south of three facades, but they’re dual aspect to the north and south. They do genuinely their house-like proportions, house-like backyards, private pools, amazing landscaping, a very high-end luxurious product.

Anthony Denman:
And then the penthouse, I don’t think I’ve ever seen … There’s that penthouse on the top of the Seidler building, right? At Tamarama, the back of Illawong Avenue. They redeveloped that and put two penthouses on the top floor, but even that like wasn’t a whole floor. And then Eduard Litver’s Lighthouse down on the Swiss Grand, but again, they weren’t whole floor.

Lian Hancock:
It’s extremely rare, again comes back to this location, the aspects of this location, not only its proximity to the coast, but its aspect of the coast. The context east of the site is low scale, residential. So beyond level one or two, you would start to get significant panoramic views from Bondi Ocean down to Tamarama. So that’s only amplified at the uppermost level of the penthouse. Whereas I said, we can afford to wrap the entire apartment with external terracing. It’s quite interesting that the articulation of the building form below starts to then set out a series of external rooms around that penthouse rather than it being one continuous external space. And those individual external rooms almost work in relation to the internal program so that you might get a master bedroom with a portion of that terracing that is it feels like it’s assigned to that bedroom rather than it being a portion of space of a larger area. Yeah.

Anthony Denman:
And that’s the same even for the, what we’re calling the horizon apartments. We are seeing that even from level two, you will get like horizon-line views, but it’s not like … I mean, the penthouse is super special and the garden apartments are super special too, but it’s not like the middle apartments aren’t super special either, right?

Lian Hancock:
No, they’ll have fantastic views. They’ll have a fantastic aspect. I think also the abundance of landscape in the foreground within the plot will offer a very softened green foreground to that horizon and those landscaped areas also provide an environment that you can look upon rather than also inhabiting individually. So I feel like the combination of that softening green foreground and then the ocean horizon lines, they’re going to be spectacular.

Anthony Denman:
That’s really nice that the combination of … We talked about the urban environment dissipating to the natural and the Bondi versus Tamarama versus Bronte. I think that’s what Bondi down on the beachfront, Campbell Parade-

Lian Hancock:
It’s harder, right? It’s a harsher environment. There’s more hard stand. There’s less green in Bondi, especially in proportion to the size of it than there is in say Tamarama or Bronte. I definitely appreciate that sense of more greenery in Bronte and Tamarama as opposed to Bondi. I think, also those horizon apartments, what’s interesting is because they’re larger apartments and there’s less of them in the building, virtually all of the apartments are corner apartments, so they have this dual aspect. And as soon as you have a corner apartment, opens up so many values of amenity like naturally cross ventilation, having two aspects to look at.
It broadens the width of the aperture and that always makes apartments feel larger as well. You’d always choose a wider rather than a shallow and wide apartment as opposed to a narrow and deep, because the natural light can get more easily to all aspects of the apartment. And I think that’s something in those horizon apartments, they don’t only have the aspect the way they’re positioned in the building, they’re all quite wide corner apartments, feel almost larger than the number says they are.

Anthony Denman:
Having only like eight apartments in a strata scheme that’s in itself is valuable, right?

Lian Hancock:
Absolutely, yeah. Just numerically, you feel more like a name than a number when there’s only eight owners. I feel like you’re probably more likely to get to know your neighbours a bit better. You’d like to think that it helps to facilitate more of a community feel than a larger block with large number of residents. Just things like the communal facilities, there’s only eight owners, it wouldn’t be a surprise to go to the communal pool and have it to yourself.

Anthony Denman:
Yeah, totally. I reckon that it happened quite a bit.

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, it would happen quite a lot, I think.

Anthony Denman:
And you’d imagine they’d all be pretty like-minded too.

Lian Hancock:
You’d think so. I think so. Yeah. I think there’s a particular personality that’s naturally drawn to this location and this product.

Anthony Denman:
The luxury of space is so cliched, isn’t it, the luxury of space? And it’s such a simple idea. How would you articulate that idea?

Lian Hancock:
I think space just gives you the sense of being able to breathe, offers you more distance to your neighboring environment. So in terms of the site itself, having space on the site gives you an opportunity to not separate, but give yourself some distance to your neighbour. And then in the dwellings themselves, in the apartments themselves, I think space just gives you more options as to how you can use that environment to live in different ways.

Anthony Denman:
Because it’s an undervalued commodity space. Everyone’s intent is to take space and to fill it up with something.

Lian Hancock:
Yeah. It’s nice to not have to do that in this instance, not every square meter of it. It will be interesting when it comes back down to the sale rates insomuch as where they land in reference to other developments of a similar nature that don’t necessarily have all that space. Because it’s a question we’re constantly discussing with our clients, “What’s the value of communal facilities? How do you place a value on that?” They’re not paying so directly for it, but you would like to think that it’s reflected in the rates that you get for the units. So it would be interesting. I think there’s a distinct value. It’s hard to quantify what that is in exact terms, but experientially, absolutely, there’s a huge value.

Anthony Denman:
What does understated luxe mean to you? I think that’s your term.

Lian Hancock:
I think it comes back to the type of person that would choose to live in this area. I think understated luxe essentially is something being of a high quality and of a luxurious nature that is imbued across all of the experience of that thing, whether it be a project, whether it be a product. It certainly is to do with high-quality craftsmanship, enduring qualities, as opposed to something that advertises the fact that it’s luxurious. It’s more about the entire experience, feels high quality and considered as opposed to overtly saying, “This is something that’s luxurious and high end.”

Anthony Denman:
So how do you achieve-

Lian Hancock:
I think you do it in … It’s a holistic thing. So it’s the experience of everything about the development. So from when you enter the site, how you enter the building, your pedestrian experience of moving in and through the building, through the landscape, the materials that you use and the way that you apply those materials need to evoke a sense of consideration, high-quality, natural materials. Yeah.

Anthony Denman:
What else is really interesting, the garden apartments face north to south, and then as soon as you go up one level, they flip and orientate east to west.

Lian Hancock:
I think that’s … As with all our projects, they’re very contextual in terms of the building, the way the building’s designed, the way landscape’s designed is in reference to its immediate and broader context. And quite often, the formal manipulation of our designs are as a reference to what’s around them. And in this instance, at that ground level, the environment that you want to tap into is the garden environments on your site. There’s not necessarily extended views beyond the site. So earlier on, there was a diagram that we came about that, on that lower level, you’d want your accommodation to be having a very direct relationship to what’s north and south.
But then as soon as you go up one level, the context to the east is quite low rise, so you’re immediately then exposed to views of the ocean that are on the east. So all of a sudden, you ideally want your apartments to reorientate to tap into the amenity at that level, which is a more broader views and aspect amenity, as opposed to an immediate private outdoor space. So that’s something that the project embodies, is this. It’s almost like the core and the communal corridor is like a pivot that the accommodation pivots around to maximise the amenity that each level has as you move up through the building.

Anthony Denman:
Maximising view opportunities from corner aspects?

Lian Hancock:
Yeah, I think it comes back to, again, the context. The context to the west is slightly larger apartment buildings. So there was always this idea that the building would orientate itself east to the ocean. And so yeah, dividing the apartments in such a way that you can create predominantly corner apartments that either face northeast towards Bondi or southeast towards Tamarama and Bronte beyond was always something that was inherent in the qualities of the site that we wanted to maximise.

Anthony Denman:
And you do that through?

Lian Hancock:
I think it’s through the positioning of the apartments, but then also the positioning of the primary living areas of those apartments are located in those corners.

Anthony Denman:
Natural light and crossflow ventilation is important to any property, real estate, anywhere.

Lian Hancock:
Yeah. If you’re living in a nice natural environment, if you can do things that emphasise the connection between your living environment and that natural environment, then they can only amplify that experience. So connecting to light, connecting to fresh air, connecting to views, connecting to aspect are all elements of that. And it puts less pressure on energy consumption. If you can naturally ventilate an apartment as opposed to using mechanical means, that’s a healthier, more environmentally friendly way of living.

Anthony Denman:
If there was a single greatest thing you loved most about designing Halcyon?

Lian Hancock:
Oh, look, I think in terms of the design, I think it’s probably that rare opportunity of being able to design an apartment building that had a bit of space around it, had that buffer of landscape that could enable you to design the building in such a way that, at every opportunity it interacted with that and referenced that. Quite often, we’re designing buildings in much tighter urban infill environments, and it’s about shaping and manipulating form in relation to other built form. In this instance, it was almost shaping and manipulating form in relation to space and landscape. So that’s just a more broader thing that I think crossed all aspects of the building. It’s one of the most enjoyable things about all the projects we work on, is the other professionals that we work with, we’re very fortunate these projects demand a very high level of quality, and as a result, all of the consultants that we work with, all the other design disciplines are all of a real high caliber. And you start to work more and more with those organisations and you start to develop synergies with them. So Richards Stanisich were doing a number of projects with Kirsten and those guys and also with Melissa, with the landscape. So it’s always a pleasure to work with like-minded individuals that really … The number one focus is quality, really, above all else.

Anthony Denman:
I think my last question, what it would feel like to live at Halcyon-

Lian Hancock:
Yeah. I’d like to think that it’s a real place of luxurious refuge. It’s quiet luxury. It’s an opportunity to relax, unwind, very high-quality, natural environment.

Anthony Denman:
If anybody did want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Lian Hancock:
Oh, the best way would be to contact the office. So maybe go on our website, mhndu.com. You can contact the office at any time. We’re always happy to help in whatever way possible.

Anthony Denman:
That’s awesome.

Lian Hancock:
Pleasure.