The Kurraba penthouse: Luxury harbour-front living with stunning Sydney views

There’s more to The Kurraba penthouse than first meets the eye. While there’s no denying the peninsula position dishes up Sydney’s ultimate eye candy, with spectacular views that include the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, you’ll want to step inside to appreciate exactly what’s on offer.

The team at developer Third.i Group decided that this two-storey abode, the cream on the Kurraba Residences cake, should be undisputedly world-class.

“We wanted to style the apartment [so] someone from New York, from London, from Hong Kong or Singapore would walk in and have that sense of sophistication and brilliance,” says Luke Berry, the co-founder and director of Third.i Group.

“We wanted this property to hold its own on an international level, with an international view, and we needed an interior to match that.”

Enter interior designer Phillip Mathieson, who worked with architects SJB to create the definitive fully furnished  turnkey package. All you need to settle in here is a change of clothes and your toothbrush.

The Kurraba penthouse is furnished not with off-the-shelf products, but with custom and catalogue pieces from renowned French design studio Liaigre.

Founded in Paris in the 1980s by Christian Liaigre, the studio has worked on private homes for the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld and Bryan Adams.

Mathieson believes this may be the first time Liaigre has been used so comprehensively in an Australian apartment.
He describes the furniture as contemporary interpretations of classic designs using wonderfully tactile materials.

Oak, bronze, leather and silk all feature across pieces Mathieson believes will prove timeless, including a Malte dining table and hand-stitched leather Archipel chairs.

The furnishings pair beautifully with Mathieson’s penthouse interiors, which also focus on a sensory experience.

Linen curtains stir in the harbour breeze, while dark-stained American oak cabinetry is wire-brushed, exposing the natural grain. The four-metre-long kitchen island is clad in Italian grigio argento marble, fluted on the breakfast bar side.

The staircase balustrade is carved from solid limestone, while in the main bedroom’s en suite, both the bath and island vanity are carved from single blocks of statuario marble. A circular skylight with a large, suspended mirror echoes the vanity’s pure cylindrical geometry.

There are more skylights in the gallery-like hallway, where works leased from Artbank are displayed (these pieces can also be bought by the buyer).

The inclusions don’t finish there, however. The kitchen is fully stocked with cutlery and cookware, and linen is stashed away in the cupboards.

“Everything you can imagine is there, ready to activate for a buyer to move in with a bag of clothes,” Berry says.

Making life even simpler, Kurraba Residences has a concierge service that is ready to help with requests big or small.

“Troy and his team are on hand six days a week, to be there to help with the transition and the moving and then to be there to provide ongoing support to our buyers – as they do with the community already living there,” Berry says.

“You can just make a phone call and the property is warmed up or cooled down, depending on the time of year. Your favourite beer and wines are in the fridge, the food that you love to eat is on the table, and you can literally walk in and relax.”

Berry says The Kurraba penthouse belongs in the league of “rarefied real estate”.

“It’s got an unrivalled position on the harbour looking back towards Sydney,” he says.

“There’s nothing else like it on this side of the bridge, with over 400 square metres of internal space on the water’s edge, and never to be built out views of the iconic Opera House, Harbour Bridge and Barangaroo.”

Berry says that, with only 24 apartments, Kurraba Residences offers a very exclusive opportunity to live in a premium Sydney locale, so close to the harbour, “you feel like you can touch it”.

With its house-like scale, the penthouse should appeal to a broad buyer base, ranging from business titans and celebrities to families looking to downsize from trophy homes.

“There aren’t many apartments where you can say you walk out of your living room onto a deck and then onto real grass and an infinity-edge pool and a fire pit that looks over Sydney Harbour,” Berry says.

What the agent says

“In my 10 years working in luxury property, I’ve never seen anything like this piece of real estate; it truly redefines luxury living on the North Shore,” Callum Billinghurst, Hume Residential.

This feature is part of a Prestige Living package.

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