This is my first editor’s letter since signing off at Inside Out magazine in 2010—and it is rather like riding a bicycle. The return to editing feels instinctive, embedded in muscle memory. Not that the intervening years have been without creative output: eight books on design, gardens and architecture (and counting), curated exhibitions, brand direction, and a longstanding advisory relationship with est—out of which this role has quietly emerged.
And what a treat it is. I get to work with the est team in a more direct and meaningful way, and the fact that former editor Sophie Lewis is now our European correspondent brings both continuity and an important skill set retained within the fold.
At first I wondered what I could bring. But as conversations with publisher Miffy Coady and head of creative Jack Seedsman evolved, the answer became clear: simply an intensification of the est lens on people and how they create. Whether interior spaces, objects, art, gardens, buildings, retail environments or hospitality—who makes them? How do they think? What do they care about? And how do they manifest beauty?
We’ve drawn out the personal with some interesting pairings of subject and writer. Leonard Joel’s Ronan Sulich cross-examines Kym Elphinstone about her Sydney warehouse art collection, while Eryca Green quizzes Oliver Wilcox and Simon Leah about their remarkable new Melbourne space, Lost Profile Gallery—a showroom, vintage dealer and gallery space rolled into one exquisitely curated retail statement.
I couldn’t be more pleased with the range of Australian exclusives, from Super Nova Sky Villa by Daniel Goldberg at State of Craft, a Sydney project I’ve followed closely, to Madeleine Blanchfield Architects’ bucolic idyll Seafarm in rural New South Wales, and Studio Doherty’s Boulevard House—a pitch-perfect visual palette cleanser in its handling of colour, form and materiality.
In a new series of personal opinion pieces, Swedish-born designer Anna-Carin McNamara contemplates the nature of her connection to home while staying in the Nordic region; David Harrison reports on 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen. As destination hotels continue to develop distinct personalities, I take a first-hand tour of Studio KO’s Bus Palladium—the five-star reimagining of an iconic Parisian nightspot. And then to Lisbon, as you do, to record a really wonderful podcast with Manuel Aires Mateus (who admits his doubts while we can recognise his genius), a warm and intelligent man who places people at the very centre of what he does.
And when, can I ask, did the kitchen become the most expressive room in the house? Sophie Lewis dissects the latest thinking—from the ingenious Italians to the restrained French via local examples of material mixes, colour fields and sculptural form.
I cringe when I see “ENJOY!” as a sign-off, but that is my wholehearted sentiment, so it is allowed to stay—just this once.
Seafarm by Madeleine Blanchfield. Photography by Anson Smart
Seafarm by Madeleine Blanchfield. Photography by Anson Smart