Australian Interior Design Awards winners share the challenges behind their designs

Now in their 19th year, the Australian Interior Design Awards (AIDA) are considered the country’s leading industry-based awards program recognising the best of design.

At a recent gala dinner in Sydney, winners were announced across 11 categories, including public, hospitality and retail design – as well as the Best of State Awards for residential and commercial design.

Here, we take a look at the projects that won the prestigious national awards for residential design and decoration in 2022.

Stable and Cart House

Clare Cousins Architects

The AIDA jury unanimously agreed that the “exemplary” transformation of a 1920s warehouse by Clare Cousins Architects was the “absolute standout project”. They awarded Stable and Cart House the highest accolade, the Premier Award for Interior Design, as well as the residential design award and the Victorian state award.

After owning the North Melbourne warehouse – designed by esteemed Burnham Beeches architect Harry Norris – for 25 years, Cousins’ clients wanted to turn it into a home to retire in.

“The design challenge was a paradox: how do you introduce the obligatory domestic program while preserving the warehouse scale of the interior shell and memories of its past,” Cousins says. “We wanted to celebrate the patina and decay of materials as interior surfaces and improve the building’s thermal comfort.”

The project was praised for the way it balanced the existing building with bold new insertions such as a courtyard to bring in natural light, while the new materials palette contrasts and highlights the old.

“What resonates most is the authenticity of the design and the way it has been conceived to be lived in and not just looked at,” the jury noted. “It’s not about opulence, but a sense of naturalness within an engaging space that has a welcoming feel to it. It is sublime in every way.”

Cousins says she was honoured for Stable and Cart House to be recognised by the jury as well as being “grateful to our clients for their trust in us to deliver such a unique project”.

Troye Sivan House

Flack Studio

The striking transformation of Australian singer-songwriter Troye Sivan’s Melbourne home was the standout winner of the Residential Decoration Award.

“It displays a strong sense of the client’s character through a beautiful curation of art, furniture, lighting and objects in a way that doesn’t feel forced or contrived,” the AIDA jury noted. “It’s appealing because it achieves so much in a small space.”

Sivan bought the house in early 2020 after five years of living in the US. He commissioned Flack Studio founder David Flack to overhaul the space after connecting with the studio’s work on Instagram.

The house sits on a former 19th-century handball court and was transformed into a residence by renowned architect John Mockridge in 1970. The jury praised the way in which Flack Studio celebrated the original architecture by “elevating it to a whole other level”.

The transformation boasts bold Verde Fantastico marble and oak veneer joinery in the kitchen, blush Tiberio marble and aged brass tapware in the bathrooms and walls of luminous Venetian plaster. Furniture additions include a sage-green Maker & Son sofa, which Sivan calls the “most comfortable couch in the world”.

“The project has a wonderful spirit that is overwhelmingly endearing and uplifting,” the jury said.