THE BRIEF: Should You Really Knock That Wall Down?

What an apartment renovation taught me about protecting the view, understanding the building and asking better questions before work begins.

You've seen the Pinterest boards, The TV shows and the Instagram posts. Knock down a wall. Open the kitchen to the living space. Let the light flood through.

It looks effortless.

The reality is usually a little more complicated. Especially when it comes to apartment renovations which tend to enter a new level of requirements and regulations that many are not aware of. I won’t bore you to tears here with the Building acts and regulations but rather an observation over the years of renovating apartments.

One of the questions I'm asked most often is, "Can we just remove this wall?" It sounds simple enough, but it's rarely a simple answer. Because in an apartment, a wall is almost never just a wall.

Over the years, I've realised the first thing I do when I walk into an apartment isn't look at the kitchen or the bathroom. I look at where my eye naturally goes. More often than not, that's telling me what the home is trying to protect.

Sometimes it's the light.

Sometimes it's the sense of space.

Sometimes, it's the view.

But, underlying it all is the fact that it is generally protecting several levels above, apartments to the side and below!

Understanding that before we begin changing anything is often the difference between a good renovation and a truly great one. And whilst I cannot guarantee, it also usually helps to ensure that you retain a relatively good relationship with your neighbours. Afterall you never know when you need to ask for that extra cup of sugar!

Apartments play by different rules

An apartment isn't simply a smaller version of a house. It's an entirely different discipline.

You're renovating within a shared building where structure, services, strata requirements, neighbours and common property all influence what's possible. Decisions that seem straightforward on paper often have implications that reach well beyond your own front door.

That's not a reason to avoid ambitious ideas.

It's a reason to ask better questions before construction begins.

I've lost count of how many times I've heard someone say, "It's only one wall."

Sometimes they're right.

Often, they're not.

Sometimes the obvious answer isn't the right one

A recent project began exactly this way.

My clients had fallen in love with an apartment overlooking one of Sydney's iconic beaches. The outlook was extraordinary, but the kitchen felt disconnected from the living space. Like many older apartments, it reflected a different way and style of living, and they wanted the home to feel more open, more connected and better suited to the way they live today.

Their first question was exactly the one you'd expect.

"Can we remove this wall?"

At first glance, it felt like the obvious solution.

As we explored the possibilities, however, it became clear that removing the wall solved one problem while quietly creating several others.

Yes, the wall was structural, which meant introducing a new column to support the apartments above. So any design would have to ensure that this column looked intentional and like it was always part of the design intention.

But that wasn't what concerned me most.

Standing in the living room, your eye was drawn straight through to the ocean beyond. It was impossible not to look there. That view was the reason my clients had fallen in love with the apartment, and understandably so.

Removing the wall meant the entire living room would need to be reconfigured, and with it the natural focal point of the room shifted away from the view that had made the apartment so special in the first place. This was the space that they spent most of their time relaxing, entertaining and working from home, so we were not going to have their backs to it.

The easiest design decision would have been to remove the wall.

The better design decision was to protect the reason they bought the apartment.

The conversation was no longer about whether we could remove the wall.

It became about whether we should, or whether there was another option.

Every decision creates another

That's one of the things I enjoy most about apartment renovations.

Every design decision creates another.

Remove a wall and you may lose the storage that quietly made the kitchen work.

Relocate the kitchen and suddenly plumbing, drainage and ventilation all need to find a new home.

Introduce new services and you may need a bulkhead or a dropped ceiling to conceal them.

Lower the ceiling and you're balancing lighting, acoustics and proportions all at once. You are also playing with the minimal height requirements for living spaces.

None of these decisions appear in the finished photographs.

Yet every one of them shapes how the finished home feels to live in.

Clients often think my job begins with choosing finishes.

In reality, that's usually the easy part.

The real work is understanding how every decision influences the next.

The details nobody notices

The same apartment presented another challenge.

There was a slight difference between the height of one window and the adjoining cornice. It wasn't dramatic, but once you noticed it, your eye kept returning to it.

Rather than highlighting the inconsistency, we designed around it.

A recessed ceiling detail quietly resolved the alignment while giving us the perfect place to conceal the curtain track we'd planned all along.

Nobody walking into that room will ever comment on it.

And that's exactly the point.

Clients often think design is about creating beautiful things.

In reality, it's just as often about solving problems beautifully.

The renovation doesn't stop at your front door

Then there are the parts of apartment renovations that rarely appear on Pinterest.

Strata approvals.

Building access.

Lift bookings.

Noise restrictions.

Protecting common property.

Delivery schedules.

Engineering reports have never made anyone's mood board.

They do, however, prevent some very expensive surprises.

When these conversations happen early, the renovation moves forward with confidence instead of compromise.

Why I always start with the building

People sometimes assume the first stage of a renovation is choosing materials or designing the kitchen.

For me, it starts somewhere else.

I want to understand the building.

How it works.

What it can accommodate.

What deserves to be preserved.

And where there are opportunities to improve the way the home functions without losing the qualities that made it special in the first place.

Beautiful homes aren't created by making the biggest changes.

They're created by making the right ones.

The question behind the question

So, should you really knock that wall down?

Maybe.

But I've come to believe that's rarely the real question.

The better question is this:

What happens if we do?

Sometimes the answer is wonderful.

Sometimes it introduces compromises that outweigh the benefit.

The real value lies in understanding everything that wall is doing before you decide.

The most successful apartment renovations aren't the ones with the biggest budgets.

They're the ones where the difficult decisions were made before the first tile was removed.

Because great renovations aren't about making a home bigger.

They're about making it better.

That's exactly why every project I undertake begins with understanding the building before we begin designing the home.

Because clarity at the beginning protects everything that follows.

And that's exactly what Claritās was created to do.