It began in Mexico, stopped off to pick up some friends in New York, and has now arrived, via Adelaide, in Australia. Hemispheres is the first collaboration between Bankston Architectural and CIVILIAN, Australian hardware firm and North American design studio respectively.
The title of the collection carries multiple meanings. First, there is the global scope of the collaboration, with Bankston and CIVILIAN literally working together across hemispheres. Second, form: this collection is especially notable for taking different materials to create a single shape in multiple forms. There are in fact five key materials – American Walnut, Potoro Gold Marble, Polished Chrome, Smooth Nickel and Bone, while the actual range of products on offer includes door knobs, levers, pulls, robe hooks and a door stop.
“We are thrilled to introduce this project alongside Steve and Emily Bradley and the Bankston team, marking their official North American debut,” says Ksenia Kagner, Co-founder of CIVILIAN alongside Nicko Elliott. “As longtime friends and fellow design purveyors, this collection embodies our shared creative vision and forward-thinking approach, and we look forward to sharing it with design enthusiasts around the world.”
The initial spark for the collaboration goes back some years to a rather fortuitous holiday meeting between Steve, Emily, Ksenia and Nicko in Mexico. Having bonded over their mutual passion for design, they had just about fallen out of each other’s orbits until an even more fortuitous crossing of paths. Nicko reached out to Bankston having seen some interesting products, only to be greeted with: ‘Wait – are you the people we met in Mexico?’ The rest, as they say, is hardware history.
“This collaboration epitomises a vision for innovative design in the finishing touches that connect individuals to their space,” says Emily Bradley, Co-CEO of Bankston Architectural. “We are thrilled to present Hemispheres to the world with our friends and colleagues at CIVILIAN who helped bring this collection to life. We also celebrate this momentous occasion, marking the beginning of an exciting chapter for Bankston, as we embrace our entry into the American design community.”
CIVILIAN is a multifaceted building and interior design studio. While the founding pair are architects (and partners), their practice deliberately stalks across and transgresses the rigid boundaries of design. It’s in this context that CIVILIAN is so enthusiastic about bringing rigorous, sensitive and thoughtful design to hardware; you might say that they help to keep the ‘architectural’ in ‘architectural hardware.’
Bankston, meanwhile, is based in Adelaide and has a longstanding reputation for excellence in architectural and interior design, producing functional objects of exceptional quality.
Hemispheres aims to push the boundaries of architectural hardware design on a global stage, focusing on a blend of form and function that evokes the traditions of architecture and design that see no qualitative difference between crafting a door handle and working at the scale of a whole city.
