KODA
Both nostalgic and futuristic, KODA is a blazingly bold hair salon perched on the upper mezzanine level of Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building. Blending the client’s progressive approach to bringing session styling to the salon and passion for Italian designer pieces (notably mid-century and selections from the seventies), it balances angled poise with organic shapes and undulating forms. With its embrace of dynamic primary colours and nuanced tones, plus Burl timbers and hybrid solid materials – including terrazzo, Marblo and high gloss Polyurethane – it instantly engages the senses.
- SCOPE
Interior Design & Furnishing
- PHOTOGRAPHY
Prue Ruscoe
As one of Sydney’s leading salons with regular local and international engagements straddling the fashion show circuit and editorial, we created a space that subjectively expressed KODA’s innovation and exceptional colouring, cutting and styling skills. It’s combining myriad shades and glossy tints, plus layered volume in contrast to the customary neutral tones of most hair salons. Avoiding sensory overload, it resonates with a push-pull tension of honed and polished, reflective and matte, plus soft and strong elements.
Working within a heritage commercial building, insertions could only lightly touch the original fabric, excluding the floor where inspiration came from Gio Ponti’s Villa Planchart, defined by richly hued oversized triangular tessellations of marble within its atrium. Laying the salon’s foundation, we custom-cut robust terrazzo slabs in golden honey and fresh forest greens tempered with light and dark greys. These pieces expand the space, aided by reflections from the floor-set mirrors whose angled green quartzite frames provide an envelope of privacy for those seated before them.
Demonstrating KODA’s highly personalised offering, we adorned a rare mid-century Burl credenza with custom high gloss cobalt shelving to display product via conceptual tonal arrangements in the window. Another, a glossy forest green shade resting on a moss-hued quartzite base, occupies the other window. They account for the salon’s heaviest concentrations of richly layered colours. Within, matching green plus additional glossy terracotta-shaded Polyurethane shelves and floating ledges plus an angled folding screen with brass knuckle hinges add a kinetic lightness. We also pierced the richly veined surface of the Rosso Levanto marble Colour Table with a deep green lacquered hourglass leg to contextualise KODA’s novel appeal. Above, a 1970’s Mangiarotti chandelier balances its gravitas via gently cascading transparent crystal links.
Seeking a boutique-like experience of discovery that disguised practical and commercial elements, we banished trolleys cluttered with tools. Instead, we matched the window’s Burl credenza with lighter blonde custom creations: a triangular point of sale featuring rounded edges with an inset green quartzite trim artfully displaying product, plus cupboards in curved Deco forms hovering between mirrors storing styling tools. Custom stands paired to stations comprise Tuscan yellow Marblo with aged brass armatures from which tongs and hairdryers artfully hang.