Latest Blogs

preserving the past

Lisbon based architecture studio AVA is behind the interior design and renovation of this stunning to die for apartment in Portugal’s capital city. Situated on the first floor of a 1893 building, the ‘Três Marias Loft’ is owned by a married couple of engineers with two small children. The designers chose to intervene upon the existing space as little...

1950’s worshop

A designer, his two sons and their terrier Winston share a small 1950’s building that stands rather unnoticed among its neighbors in the Mile-Ex district in Montreal. The robust walls of this former workshop hide a well designed conversion within led by Atelier Moderno. Large windows and full-height steel door which are slightly recessed announce the minimalist mastery of the interior plan....

2014 Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA)

Now in its 12 year, (Inside) magazine has announced the winners of its 2014 Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). The winners and nominees of the 12th annual awards have been celebrated in fine style at the IDEA Gala Party. Held at Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney on Friday 21 November and I was fortunate to partake in the celebrations. The night’s highly anticipated Overall Winner prize...

The Coppersmith South Melbourne

The landmark Coppersmith Hotel located in Melbourne Australia was the old Cricket Club Hotel, first licensed in 1870. Reborn as the Coppersmith, it is now a boutique hotel with 15 guestrooms, a gastronomic bar and dining room and a rooftop retreat. The owners of Coppersmith Hotel wanted to create "a home away from home for the busy traveller"....

Home Is Where the Creative Lives

I am lucky enough to have travelled all over the world. I am luckier again to have stayed in people’s homes all over the world as a guest or at times as part of a house swap. It was natural then that I was drawn to the following portfolio of homes from around the globe. Together they form a small number of incredible homes represented...

the rolling hills of the Mornington Peninsula

The Red Hill residence occupies a portion of unique Australian landscape, incorporating the rolling hills of the Mornington Peninsula and spectacular views of the bay towards Dromana/Safety Beach. The house designed by SJB  is a modernist pavilion embedded into the sloping site, is also the destination at the end of a gravel road which winds its way through...

Art adds punch

This narrow six story house, converted by architectural designer Maha Kutay of Zaha Hadid fame and Furnished by Francois Catroux is a converted Queen Ann block of apartments in London, England. The family home is filled with a provocative contemporary art collection. The diversity of the collection delivers its message light-heartedly and plays with scale. A Mickey...

Melbourne’s street art and Lifeline Australia

Yesterday was 13th November, 2014 (13 11 14) - this is also the same number of Lifeline Australia's Crisis Support Line: 13 11 14. To recognise the unique date, Lifeline has commissioned artist Darren Henderson to develop a street mural in Melbourne’s iconic Gertrude Street. The mural pays tribute to the vital work of Lifeline volunteers and will encourage those feeling vulnerable to reach out. Every...

on the edge

Marcio Kogan’s studio MK27 can simply do no wrong and the Redux House, located in Sao Paulo in the countryside of São Paulo encapsulates the MK27 DNA.

Built on open land, on a downward slope terrain on the edge of a large environmental preservation area of a native forest. The...

Balmain Apartment

Inspired by the interiors of mid-century modernist residential design, the Balmain apartment designed by Durbach Block Jaggers celebrates the intimacy and immediacy of the everyday. Functions overlap in this tiny renovated space, 7m x 9m in plan and only 2.4m high. The lower part of the walls are painted out to match the floors introduced at 900mm above...