My design process always begins by imagining how I want a project to feel, with staging and storytelling narrating strong visual outcomes across them all. All YSG spaces possess an interconnected, sculpted appeal, with hybrid custom solutions enhancing this flow. Beyond joinery and innovative floor and wall treatments, this often incorporates entrance doors to set the scene, through to seating, bedding, lighting and tables of all sizes. I am also a vintage stalker, hunting online and trawling markets, often adding signature touches like an incredible fabric to an armchair so each piece evolves to suit its new home perfectly.
Unconventional influences provide the undercurrent of harmony across my projects. The selections below explore just some of them, also demonstrating ways in which bespoke detailing helps me to immortalise an intended mood.
Perched within a penthouse overlooking Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay, Dream Weaver (below) befits the freedoms of its new empty nesters. It is futuristic, with an upbeat dose of Pedro Almodóvar’s cinematic eccentricity. Given limited wall space to hang art or attach joinery, it delves into a Pantone party of deep piled custom rugs and stone surfaces with planetary swirls to counterbalance its minimal, box-like frame shrouded in glass. Innovative lighting solutions also serve aesthetic purposes.
As consummate entertainers, the couple requested conversational custom pieces. Setting the scene, I designed an automatic sliding door beside the lift. Its large amber porthole frames the entry vestibule where vintage Italian citrus-hued glass lighting totems sprout from the floor, setting a 007 vibe with its ‘Golden Eye’ glow.
Related: Meet Melbourne-based Joanne Odisho
I clad the kitchen island in hand-cut, mismatched, oversized Lapis Blue granite to convey a rippled water effect on its solid mass. A curved plinth floats upon drum legs beside it, with a plum-toned fulcrum supporting a 360-degree rotating ‘platter’ (for canapés or cheese). It spins into motion during gatherings. Perched nearby, a mobile drinks trolley with matching blue granite was designed to follow guests to the balcony. Its integrated lamp oversees perfect spirit pours at night.
With limited wall space in the primary suite, the bedhead became its cosy, textured anchor. Stained zebra veneers were layered with carpet upholstery and crowned with Calacatta Viola marble. A solar system of blown glass lighting in complementary berry shades cascade beside it. Initiating additional storage was tricky with so many glass surfaces, so I designed all the beds, incorporating streamlined drawers at their base.
Nestled amongst rolling hills sprinkled with citrus gardens on the New South Wales South Coast, Plantasia (below) was designed for a family with young children. The couple wanted their all-white, mock-Colonial purchase to feel adorned and welcoming. Being a holiday home, I was encouraged to crank up its escapist sentiments, so I drenched it in nature with more than ten different flora and fauna wallpapers cladding walls and ceilings.
The entry vestibule instantly disarms city life stresses. A sunny, oversized timber door invites you into a world of fiction. Inside the parlour, Victorian elements including floral prints, a custom circular, velvet ottoman and ornately carved joinery add period drama, spiked with a Wes Anderson-inspired dopamine hit of colour.
The room holds you momentarily, encouraging your mind to transition. This ‘suspended in time’ theme literally extends along the central spine of the home from the entrance, down the hallway, and across the open kitchen/dining area’s floor in the form of an infinite hourglass motif defined by dark cork. It is set within caramel-shaded cork that pours into the adjoining rooms.
Curvilinear themes continue to flow, linking spaces. Teasing ‘soft’ shapes from hard surfaces like timber and stone, a dark, melted-chocolate-like surface lines a custom walnut credenza along the lounge room’s edge (dotted with Malteser-like pulls). In the powder room, deliciously thick, pastel Onyx slabs are used for open shelving, and a counter surface features bullnose edges to enhance the Fruit Tingle shades of the stone’s scribbled pattern.
Located above street level in a Surry Hills warehouse, Alémais (below) delves into imagined universes. Instead of building walls, the open space was gently divided with a mosaic mural, colourful joinery elements, and patterned banquette seating, plus timber-framed screens fitted with Tuareg mat inserts to create more porous divisions.
Design references to mythological kingdoms, aquatic worlds and folklore were loosely inspired by our client’s Lebanese heritage and fine arts background, plus her fascination with ancient cultures. Utilising the high, exposed timber ceiling, a constellation of custom fibreglass moon pendants ranging from dappled shades of lavender and champagne gold to deeper olive and aubergine orbit like lunar planets at alternating heights.
The footplate tapering into a triangular tip influenced furnishing designs, given the need to utilise every inch. Within this bow-like nook, a trippy underwater scene floats the spirit of adventure. Upon the custom ocean-bed-shaded rug (one from my Real Majik collaboration with Tappeti), seaweed tip motifs animate the velvet banquette.
Creating an artwork out of a new partition near the entrance, I coated it with shimmering mosaics, including half-human, half-animal forms floating amongst fauna under a blazing sun. It frames an L-shaped banquette clad with a tribal fabric reminiscent of a Congolese cloth, marrying tangerine chenille with rugged linen. I punked one end of it with a large Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran deity that holds court upon a bubblegum-pink-stained timber plinth.
Other references to the divine and mystical are sprinkled in the kitchen. Egyptian Seba stars glow upon the joinery via custom bronze pulls and a hand-painted ‘all-seeing’ eye blinks upon the splashback (realised by long-term collaborators I often commission to paint trompe-l’oeil effects on floors and ceilings). Another personifies the dining table. Set upon a glossy polyurethane ruffled pedestal, its embossed, elliptical surface was hand-painted in pastel tones to highlight natural woodgrain patterns. A raised Lazy Susan forms its pupil. I also repurposed several key vintage pieces, transforming a teapot-like cabinet facing the dining table into a drinks bar, plus vintage armchairs with decorative fabrics. As with all YSG projects, I wanted this space to transplant people back in time and propel them into the future — but never feel of the moment.