During the 1950s, the original buildings were owned by a passionate motoring enthusiast and car collector. After Grand Prix races, legends such as Juan Manuel Fangio, Jack Brabham and Juan Manuel Fangio–thought to have started the tradition in 1978, as well as Jackie Stewart, Alan Jones, Stirling Moss, Piero Taruffi, Luigi Villoresi, and Tony Gaze, would go back to the workshop after a race to celebrate their wins and spray-paint their names onto the walls.
When we first visited the site, the names were all still there, including the original cobblestones that had been worn down by horses and carts over the years. Our client chose not to showcase the signatures in the renovation; however, they remain fully intact behind the new plasterboard walls, ready to be revealed to the world again at some future time. If you look closely you’ll notice a subtle nod to a leather steering wheel with the leather wrapped handrails of the new staircase we designed.
When we were designing the stair, we looked at ways to make it as light and minimal as physically possible, but we also wanted another level of texture and detail that felt connected to the history of the building. The handrail was the obvious detail to focus on. How could we introduce something unexpected and minimal, but also luxurious, that would patina over time? We thought about the site’s historic link to the Melbourne Grand Prix, and the feeling of leather gloves and steering wheels with all their handsome stitching.
We searched for a master leatherworker and were lucky enough to find one in Melbourne who could pull off the challenging brief. The handrail is fixed into a steel block in the wall, so the leather had to be stitched on site. Working around the bend in the railing was very challenging. The leatherworker called us in a panic when he reached the corners. In the old days, they would have wet the leather and then put it in the oven to get that smooth curve, but we liked the way it bunched up, behaving the way that leather should behave.
In the end, there’s something organic and real about the handmade nature of it all. There’s no smokescreen here. The contemporary insertion in this building is quite fine–there’s no heavy or chunky details–and the leather is in balance with that.
