A Warehouse Inspired Penthouse Like No Other

The beauty of a warehouse-style conversion is found in its immense sense of space. This unique offering at 1/6 Tilbrook Street, Teneriffe on the Brisbane River offers vacuous amounts of loft and light across three levels.

The interplay of glass and architectural voids – combined with the 921sqm floorplan – sees this residence feel exceptionally large. With 6-bedrooms, 5-bathrooms and 4-car garage with direct access, the penthouse functions more like a rooftop home than an apartment.

The main living space sees soaring ceiling heights in which the kitchen – fitted with granite benchtops, Gaggenau appliances and a butler’s pantry – combines with the outdoor dining and living room. A vintage Indian motorbike has been bolted into the wall and comes with purchase.

Outdoors, the balcony provides plenty of space to entertain, with a built-in barbecue, refrigeration and kitchenette, while a glass shutter offers protection from the elements.

It’s also on this floor that you’ll find the master suite, which is complete by its own walk-in robe and ensuite.

Upstairs sees the remaining bedrooms, two of which are replete with ensuites. Also here, is the theatre room and a separate large bathroom.

Further, the top level sees more room for entertaining. Here a living space is complete with a powder room, two balconies, a bar and kitchenette, while a gas fireplace forms the centrepiece of the room.

Each floor is accessible via an internal lift, with the residence is also privy to a gym, cellar, guest suite and is controlled by a CBUS-like system that automates, blinds, shutters, the skylight, speakers – found throughout the house – aircon and Boffi fans.

One of only nine residences in the build, the address gives rare access to the restaurants, cafes and Gasworks precinct and is only a short walk to the river.

The listing is with Place’s Heath Williams (+61 403 976 115). Price guide $6m.

Eplace.com.au

A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.

The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.

“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”

The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.

It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.

In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.

“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.

The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.

“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.

He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.

The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.

“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.

His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.

“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.

When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.

They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.

The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.

For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.

“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”

As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.

“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”

Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.

A Warehouse Inspired Penthouse Like No Other

At 921sqm, it’s less like an apartment and more like a house.

Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.