Newtown, new look

From BlackWhite magazine - issue 09, bright spot

Sydney terrace home brings joyous colour to the local community with a standout mural.

If you have ever found yourself butting heads with bureaucracy when attempting to bring about change, you’re probably no stranger to the frustration that accompanies it. While the preservation of cherished heritage assets is essential to protect them and ensure they don’t fall victim to subpar refurbishments, there can be circumstances where broader heritage regulations are impediments to positive improvements.

For the owner of this classic Victorian terrace home in Newtown that was in need of a repaint, there were more than a few barriers standing between her and her desire to use the project as an opportunity for enhancing the overall streetscape. “I wanted to make people smile when they walked down the street, bring joy and beauty to the precinct and make a gift to my wonderful local community,” says homeowner Laurel, who reached out to Lymesmith’s Sonia van de Haar to help turn her vision into a reality.

Though the building itself was not heritage listed, it sits within Sydney’s Heritage Conservation Zone. Lymesmith’s transformation aimed to take the home’s façade on a journey from bland beige to beautiful blue. As anticipated, the process to obtain approval for the new colour scheme and mural from the City of Sydney Council was a lengthy one.

“The project required a DA along with a heritage impact statement by an independent assessor. This felt unduly bureaucratic and expensive to the client, whose background in health and public policy had motivated her to gift the mural to her community,” explains Sonia. “Laurel saw her house as an opportunity to illustrate how the arts and the built environment can come together to lead to improvements in health and wellbeing.”

Cracknell Lonergan wrote a Statement of Heritage Advice which supported the design of the mural as being appropriate to the heritage conservation zone context – and it was ultimately approved. One of the key reasons the project was successful was because the mural design echoes shapes and colours found in the local architecture. Sonia named it Arc Angel as a play on the words, with ‘arc’ meaning a change of direction and an ‘angel’ being a messenger.

“This project illustrates my belief that heritage architecture need not be consigned to strictly historic colour schemes in perpetuity. Buildings that are in conservation zones but that are not themselves listed buildings can contribute very positively to the local context without being bland on the one hand or painted to a ‘heritage colour scheme formula’ on the other. Our older buildings should be celebrated, painted with care and reinvented over time,” says Sonia. “To identify the colours and develop the design, I walked the neighbourhood looking at the hues and shapes that repeat and are familiar in the area. I often take inspiration from the homes, art collections and personal tastes of my clients. We discovered that we shared a love of the work of famous colourist and artist Joseph Albers and the mural uses his techniques of ‘parent and child colours’ wherein two adjacent colours are mixed to create a harmonious third colour.”

After Sonia selected the new colour scheme for the exterior and came up with the mural design, Tony Isgroves got to work painting the terrace home. The main wall colour, Resene Ashanti, became the base colour for the mural with the rest of the design’s colours applied on top. Sonia says she selected Resene Lumbersider Low Sheen waterborne paint and Resene Lustacryl semi-gloss waterborne enamel for the house and Resene Lumbersider Low Sheen for the mural because of the wide colour range and lightfastness of these products. “Since the home had been previously painted with waterborne paints, these products were the most compatible with the existing surfaces,” she adds.

Leia Sidery has been the creative force behind The Art of Wall since she started the business in 2012. Armed with a background in graphic design and with plenty of large-scale painting experience under her belt, Leia was the perfect muralist to bring Lymesmith’s clean-lined design to life. She worked together with Sonia to mark it out and then completed the coloured topcoats with the help of Jo-Anne Breneger and Stacey Keating.

“This mural completely transforms the streetscape in such a positive and joyous way. The colours are so much fun, it’s impossible to not feel uplifted when you see it. Sonia has such a deft ability to pick out colours from the surroundings and put them together in a way that both stands out from, and sits within, the environment.”

Leia feels like the paint colours reflect the mural’s surrounding urban context while providing enough contrast to keep the design interesting. “The Resene paint colours Sonia chose reflect and highlight interesting hues from the surroundings, which might have otherwise gone unnoticed. This extends the experience of the mural beyond the wall it’s painted on and out into the surrounding landscape. It’s a bit magical,” she says.

For the painters, space constraints were the trickiest part of the project. “The biggest challenge was squeezing the monstrous Athena scissor lift in between the street signs and the wall without damaging the wall,” says Leia. “Years of playing Nintendo with my daughter and honing precision joystick skills came in very handy!”

For other design professionals interested in incorporating a mural on a building that sits within a conservation zone, Sonia offers some advice. “Be prepared for a long and slow process! You need to speak to Council and be clear on what is required early on in the project. The heritage report and council application will add costs and time, so your client needs to be aware of this upfront,” she says.

Nimbyism can be another concern when making changes to a heritage colour scheme, but Laurel’s commitment to bettering her community – aided by trustworthy professionals – won over dissidents. One neighbour who walked past on the first day of painting voiced her concerns, as she didn’t think street art was appropriate for the heritage neighbourhood and grumbled that “it shouldn’t be allowed”. At the end of the week, the same neighbour returned and said, “I just wanted to say how sorry I am for what I said earlier in the week. The mural is absolutely beautiful and entirely appropriate for our street, and I love it!”

But there may not be anyone who loves it as much as Laurel, who says that nothing makes her as happy as her home’s new look – aside from the birth of her son, of course.

Colours mentioned in this article...

Products mentioned in this article...

Mural design and colour selection: Lymesmith
Painting: The Art of Wall (mural), Tony Isgroves Paint and Decorate (home exterior and mural base colour)
Heritage advisors: Cracknell Lonergan Architects
Images: Julia Charles

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