The skyline over Brisbane’s West End has transitioned from its commercial and industrial past, giving way to a residential profile with a diverse collection of developments in various stages of completion. The West End has been steadily unfolding into the kind of bohemian neighbourhood desired by those migrating from the outer suburbs into the city centre.

Designed by ML Design for developer Pradella, with interiors by Tonic, the Canvas Apartments is located on a difficult triangular site, but offers amazing elevated views of the Brisbane CBD, the Brisbane River and Mount Coot-tha.

With colour being an important part of the apartments’ final design outcome, Pradella chose Taubmans as their partner to achieve the desired results for paints, coatings and finishes, both internal and external throughout the new building. With Taubmans on board, colour and finish could be determined in relation to two different yet complementary aspects of the development.

The lower podium parts of the building feature coloured ‘sticks’, which allow for the creation of a shallow screen-like formal device, assisting with privacy and framing views from apartments in the lower podium levels.

By partnering with Taubmans, the developer was able to resolve the challenging task of finding a colouring process for the aluminium sticks – one that performed better than standard powder-coating, while achieving similar colour saturation and visual effect. The Taubmans team devised a wet system of bold colour coating for an aluminium substrate, which also came with a warranty of suitable duration. Taubmans Armawall was also used on the exterior of the building, complementing the more strongly coloured elements.

Taubmans’ paints and finishes were specified for the interiors designed by Tonic in three evocatively named ‘flavours’: ‘Ink’ (touches of chocolate and charcoal), ‘Watercolour’ (touches of green) and ‘Chalk’ (neutral-toned and harmonious).

Taubmans worked with Tonic to match the interior design concept schemes to specified colours and finishes, supplying all of the interior coatings and paints, especially from the Taubmans Pure Performance range. The finish met the developer’s exacting standards, and also those of the designers.

Throughout the project, Taubmans’ representatives serviced the project, conducting regular site inspections for quality assurance as well as to ensure that the finished product met their own high standards for installation.

Canvas Apartments’ final outcome showcases a building that injects colour into this once-industrial neighbourhood.

Erik Lundberg, ML Design:

“Taubmans were always very proactive and responsive in getting a system that met the performance and warranty requirements we had.”