A family home within Ferrars & York. Enabled by HIP V. HYPE, designed in collaboration with Six Degrees Architects, built by Ironside. Appliances by V-ZUG. Photography by Tess Kelly.
Since we last spoke to Katya Crema, director of boutique developer and sustainability consultant HIP V. HYPE, the company has won a slew of awards for its progressive Ferrars & York project in South Melbourne. Honestly, there’s too many to mention here, but when asked which meant the most to her, Crema doesn’t hesitate to call out the ‘Best of the Best’ gong at the 2023 Sustainability Awards.
“The project was up against a variety of project types, not just apartments, but civic buildings and educational centres as well,” says Crema. “It proves to us, but also to the market and to the industry, that there’s real value in focusing on sustainability principles in a project like this.”
But the recognition hasn’t be earned overnight. For the past decade Crema and her partner, founder of HIP V. HYPE, Liam Wallis, have been carefully and methodically embedding an evidence-based approach in their property development business. There’s the quantitative evidence of how their buildings perform, which they support with robust and transparent post occupancy evaluations. But then there’s also a qualitative dimension – the quality of the design, the quality of the living experience, and the quality of the build process where they choose to work with a select, repeat group of consultants and vendors with a similar commitment to sustainability.
“When we’re choosing our collaborators we’re always looking to find that balance between quality, durability, value and sustainability. For us, sustainability really is about specifying low impact, responsibly-sourced materials and products that have low embodied energy and carbon and a low ecological footprint. So we do a deep dive into the materials that we’re specifying and try and deliver the best outcome on all of those fronts. And once we find products that we like, and importantly good people behind them, we stick with them.”
That deep dive led them 8 years ago to V-ZUG, a Swiss boutique appliance manufacturer which at that point had only recently set up shop in the Australian market. Specified initially for the company’s own studio in Brunswick, and then for its high-end townhouse project in Elwood, V-ZUG appliances are also a key feature in Ferrars & York where all 22 apartments can enjoy the V-ZUG ethos of simplexity: to make good design and complex technology simple to use.
“The key thing that stood out for us was their absolute commitment to design and sustainability. Sustainability was really up there alongside their design vision. It’s a perfect alignment for us: V-ZUG is a great fit in terms of functionality, longevity and durability as well. We strive to design homes that look better in 10 years’ time than the day that they were delivered. A V-ZUG product grows with you in a kitchen; you get to know it, and it becomes part of the family.”
Crema has first-hand experience of this; she and Wallis live in a generous three-bedroom apartment in Ferrars & York where they have a full suite of V-ZUG kitchen and laundry appliances installed including the CombiCooler and Wine Cooler fridges and the Combair and Comb-Steam ovens.
“What I love about using them is they’re beautiful, they’re clean, they look amazing but they’re also really easy to use. Once you get an appreciation of all of the things that you can do with it, they make your life so much easier, like roasting potatoes in 20 minutes when you’ve got hungry kids. I love to cook, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and I love using the induction cooktop. Sometimes I’ll have four or five pots on the go at any one time, and to be able to have the flexibility to move those around, take off a small pot, put on a large one, and it all just works. The cooktop picks up on where the pot is located and how big it is, and then it will adjust the heat transfer accordingly. It’s a joy to use.”
Living in their own developments puts Crema and Wallis at the intersection of those quantitative and qualitative evidence dimensions. Most people would be content to judge the success of a dinner party by the wine or the company but Crema has a building management system and its data at her finger tips. With extra bodies present she can see CO2 and humidity spiking and make adjustments accordingly via the apartment’s energy recovery ventilation system to ensure air quality remains optimal for enjoying good wine with their friends.
“We’re in a unique position as the developer, but also as the sustainability consultant and the residents, so we have a triple view on this, and are highly motivated by the results of the post-occupancy research because it ultimately becomes a feedback loop into the design of our next project and how we can improve. And yes, it is really good as well to be able to cross correlate the data with the qualitative experience of living in the home.”
If you’re interested, a report documenting a full year of the building’s performance will be available in late 2024. But if POE reviews aren’t your thing, you can always experience it for yourself by booking a stay at HV.Hotel; a curated short-stay accommodation experience located on the top level of Ferrars & York, complete with a full suite of V-ZUG appliances, managed by Crema and the HIP V. HYPE team. This statement from 20th Century Italian designer Bruno Munari – subtly written on the building’s façade – sums it up: “To complicate is simple, to simplify is complicated.”
It’s a perfect reflection of the company’s approach, which all those awards are now recognising. This is a complicated project, from the tight wedge-shaped site to the use of leading edge technology; keeping things simple on the design front has not only allowed the residents to turn these apartments into their homes, it’s given space for HIP V. HYPE’s narrative to be heard, that property development and sustainability can be a winning combination.
