Design Lives Here is a new book that showcases the best of Australian residential architecture and interiors, and pays homage to the local designers and makers who have crafted bespoke pieces of furniture and lighting for these homes, whether large or small. From a reimagined Californian bungalow with a dining table inspired by the humble HB pencil to a monumental inner-city residence furnished with more than 100 custom pieces, these houses – and the objects that reside within – offer a compelling snapshot of contemporary Australian design through the lens of materiality, utility, site and place.
Scroll down to read an extract from Design Lives Here!
Dalgety House, as featured in Design Lives Here.
Gestalt psychology is a theory of perception that says that the particular cannot be understood except in relation to the whole; a part’s significance only emerges in the context of its surroundings. In contrast, design writing tends to focus on an object’s design and making. The object itself is simply a product to be sold. But, of course, the story of the object in context is just as important as its origins as a design concept and a made form. You don’t perceive a chair in a void, without any connection to the real world. You experience it in a room, in real time, as you use it.
Theories of narrative in object design explore how stories are attached to objects, and these stories are not necessarily connected to the object’s design. In fact, as Dagmar Steffen, design theorist at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, says, ‘The design of the object often has no or rather little influence on its status as a beloved object’. The interior design of a home is constructed from these object stories, especially for ‘ethos-intensive objects’, which US design theorists Dana Vaux and David Wang describe as providing ‘points of shared understanding between the designer and the culture of the client’. Interior designers must understand not only what kind of house or apartment their client needs, and design for their lifestyle and behaviours, but also the beliefs, attitudes and values their client holds, and create a space filled with objects that carry a certain meaning. Designers must also consider how meaning will be a attached to these objects in the future.
Design Lives Here features beautiful homes designed by some of Australia’s leading architects and interior designers. Within each home, I have highlighted one piece of Australian-designed furniture or lighting. The objects are key pieces, integral to the design of the home and how each space is experienced. The spaces and objects are connected by the design process. In each case, the architect/interior designer and furniture/lighting designer has sketched their design, weighed up functional and aesthetic concerns, and selected the materials and processes that are best suited to creating a beautiful, long-lasting design. Both space and object are also connected by their user and experienced over time – ordinary days, one after the other, where you sit in this chair, in this room.
In this book, I tell stories of the origins of design – of both home and object. For the owners of Allen Key House, the purchase of the HB table as the key design piece for their living and dining space was a journey of discovery about Australian design itself, via Koskela’s showroom. Learning about this brand and its furniture led directly to their decision to purchase the table. In Perth’s House A by Whispering Smith, the Donny stool by local designer Guy Eddington was one of a number of different design features brought to the project by makers in the area. Architect Kate Fitzgerald also brought in a carpenter and a steelworker and even had the concrete panels of the building cast on site. At Smart Design Studio’s project, Indigo Slam, the entire contents of the house was a huge creative project for Adelaide furniture designer Khai Liew, whose team of joiners and artisans constructed 109 key pieces of furniture, rugs and other items designed specifically for this project.
At Treetop House, with interiors by Arent&Pyke, the apartment is filled with incredible furniture, lighting and artworks. Each decision was made in the context of the design team’s acute sensibilities of the design world at large, in combination with their consideration of the client’s needs. And at Noble Hughes House, the owners were already huge fans of mid-century fashion and collectables when they began this project. As a result, they bought a number of vintage Grant Featherston chairs from the 1950s, including the glorious Wing Contour armchair.
How each object relates to the interior of its home is discussed in more detail in the chapters ahead, but what of the houses and apartments themselves? If each object exists within the context of its home, then each of the twenty-one homes featured in this book also has its own context. Many of the designers have taken inspiration from the land, the site or the surrounding city. Others have responded to Australia’s relaxed lifestyle and its unique natural beauty, history and culture.
The Fitzroy Loft, as featured in Design Lives Here.
The different homes in Design Lives Here provide clues about the character of Australian residential design. While this book does include expansive, beautiful houses in rural locations, the truth is that Australia is one of the most urbanised (or suburbanised) countries on earth. This is reflected in the projects in this book, which are, more often than not, updated versions of existing building types familiar to most Australians – the terrace house, the Californian bungalow, the Queenslander. But that doesn’t mean that Australian residential homes aren’t changing. Our houses and apartments are influenced by new social factors: smaller dwellings on less land, urban infill, shared and intergenerational living, short-stay rentals and an ageing population. Millennial architects, interior designers and owners are rethinking the old ways. The Australian dream of owning a quarter-acre block with a picket fence and a garage is no longer relevant – or at least no longer so simple.
Design Lives Here includes houses and apartments – large and small – designed for families, couples and singles, with budgets that range from high-end to modest. There are dreamy harbour views in the city (Doorzien House by Bijl Architecture), rural locations with panoramic ocean views (The Headland by Atelier Andy Carson), city apartments with an urban edge (Fitzroy Loft by Architects EAT) and interesting approaches to the suburban setting (Kiah House by Austin Maynard Architects).
There are playful houses (Untitled 06 by Bagnoli Architects), large houses for entertaining (Kew Residence by Doherty Design Studio), houses whose stories revolve around a single material (Armadale House by B.E Architecture) and houses steeped in history (Port Officer’s House by Birrelli). Diversity of place, scale and style abounds. What these homes share is a contemporary sensibility – there are no faux historical styles here – and a sensitivity to site; bespoke architecture and interior design mean these houses and apartments are designed for their owners and for their cities, towns and suburbs.
In Australia, our history and isolation from the rest of the world have influenced our design approach. We are free from many of the trappings of history faced in Europe, where crumbling ruins must be negotiated on every street corner. Instead, we are free to make our own style – and to create our own stories of our homes and the objects that reside in them.
–Extracted from Design Lives Here by Penny Craswell (Thames & Hudson Australia), out now.
Design Lives Here
Australian design has forged its own unique trajectory, influenced by geographic isolation, a distinctive natural environment and a modern sensibility.
Design Lives Here showcases the best of Australian residential architecture and interiors, and pays homage to the local designers and makers who have crafted bespoke pieces of furniture and lighting for these homes, whether large or...
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