A visit to the top of Bohem changed our perspective on Adelaide.

The rattling steel cage of the construction lift distracts us from creating any expectations about Bohem’s suite of 22nd floor penthouse apartments.

Dressed in hardhat and hi-vis, our lift operator Peter stops the cage and lifts up the steel door to reveal a vast concrete platform, reminiscent of a giant helicopter pad with an almost instantaneous 360 degree view of eetropolitan Adelaide.

We’re on top of Adelaide’s next apartment building and we’re there with Damon Nagel, managing director of Starfish – the developer behind Bohem.

Damon walks us from the lift, across the top floor of his building site to the north east corner. The city’s buildings look amazingly close.

“That,” says Damon seemingly pointing at the city, “is all glass.”

It takes a while to understand what he’s saying. Is he being metaphorical about the city of Adelaide perhaps? No – Damon is literally describing the seven metres of double-glazed glass that will stand in the open space of this penthouse-to-be.

Drawing on all our vast knowledge of the construction industry we muster up a response, “that’s some expensive glass,” to which Damon simply nods, knowingly, “yeah,” he says.

Damon Nagel in the “living room” of one of Bohem’s penthouse apartments

It’s a powerful and yet elegant architectural statement. The vaulted ceilings of the penthouses will give Adelaide something truly unique and, in our opinion, entirely worthy of penthouse status.

Architect Enzo Caroscio stands at the corner of Morphett and Wright Streets prior to construction commencing in 2016

Designed by one of the lead architects of Adelaide’s now-iconic SAHMRI building, Bohem is an apartment building unlike any we’ve seen. Growing out of the ground at the corner of Morphett and Wright Streets, it was designed with a simple brief from Starfish to blur the lines between where Whitmore Square’s park ends and the building begins.

“The architect creates the vision and all that,” says Enzo Caroscio – Bohem’s architect. “But to me, you only create those great visions with a client who’s got a similar vision. Bohem is that.”

“I did two things when I got Enzo and Tract, the landscape architects, together,” says Damon clasping his hands.

“Right at the go – I didn’t say Enzo, ‘design a building,’ – now landscape guys, ‘go put some plants on it.’ We didn’t do that. I said, ‘guys – we’re working together and I need the plants to integrate into the building. I don’t want it to look like an afterthought.”

Whitmore Square is brought into Bohem through canny design

The resulting collaboration is both a built form and organic form that stitch together and stick out in Adelaide as extraordinary.

After graduating architecture here in Adelaide, Enzo departed almost immediately for bigger cities overseas and interstate. He’s lived in apartments for a decade himself but returning to Adelaide, at first to work on SAHMRI, and now Bohem, he thinks “extraordinary” is becoming more normal here.

“One of the reasons for leaving Adelaide was that it was always this non-progressive city unlike Sydney and Melbourne and that. But I think Adelaide has definitely turned a leaf in the last sort of five years and is definitely going in the right direction,” says Enzo.

The penthouse apartments on top of Bohem allow you to watch this city progress before your very eyes.

“The seven-meter glass on those penthouses is creating space, you’d feel more claustrophobic in a suburban house,” says Enzo. “The thing about our penthouse is that you’re not looking into your neighbour’s house, you’re looking into a view and that outlook is really quite relaxing and enjoyable to come home to.”

Back on the roof with Damon we’re enthralled by the details of this development. From the pool tiles, open courtyard and communal BBQ facilities on level six to the steel girders engineered with millimetre precision and lifts, which will travel at three meters per second – there’s an obvious affection and pride in Damon’s voice.

But there’s also a humility at the core of this project, best understood by Damon’s respect for Adelaide’s natural beauty and how this building makes the most of it, “the Mount Lofty Ranges are just stunning,” says Damon after spending a long while, hands on hips, surveying Adelaide’s topography east of Bohem.

Artist’s impression of a Bohem penthouse interior and view

CityMag always estimated that the reason someone purchases a penthouse in, say New York, is for the views but also partly to have that feeling of being on top.

We’re getting metaphorical now but, when looking at Adelaide and our downtown population, being on top doesn’t have the same meaning as being on top in Manhattan.

But Bohem changes this.

A $120 million dollar project, 22 storeys in the sky – and with over 90% of available apartments sold – Bohem is a true emblem of Adelaide’s shift towards higher-density living. Through design and dedication Starfish has delivered a vertical village in the midst of Chinatown that will instantly transform Adelaide’s CBD for the better when its population moves in.

Not only will buying a penthouse in Bohem put you on top, it will put you at the forefront of Adelaide’s changing direction and movement towards becoming a truly cosmopolitan capital.