Richards Stanisich founders and architects Jonathan Richards and Kirsten Stanisich sit down with Karen McCartney in Stanisich’s home to discuss designing emotionally resonant spaces, resisting trends while evolving aesthetically, and the role of adaptive reuse in their work.
1. Designing Emotionally Resonant Spaces
Richards Stanisich emphasise the importance of designing spaces that foster an emotional response, ensuring that the design has depth and meaning. This approach involves tapping into expressive materiality and narrative, using elements that speak to memory and sensory experience.
For example, the Sarah & Sebastian store was designed as an immersive journey that captures the experience of diving beneath the ocean, inspired by the founders’ passion for oceanography and marine sustainability. Richards Stanisich expressed this through sepia-green tones, described as an “almost iridescent phosphorescent green,” Japan Black timber stains, and shimmering metallic leaf that mimics the fluidity of moonlight on water.
2. Resisting Trends
Richards and Stanisich resist fleeting trends, favouring distinction and depth in design. They find beauty in unexpected, even conventionally “ugly” materials—overlooked elements that add richness and authenticity. Drawing on forgotten finishes and textures creates a distinctive appeal for their projects, ensuring each space lasts the test of time. Driven by curiosity and a desire to evolve, they balance continuity with innovation, creating a fresh, contextually grounded design language.
“I love seeing trends. I love seeing errors and changes. So I don’t want to say we should never do it,” Stanisich explains. “I do think trends are one of the biggest issues around sustainability in design and architecture,” she adds. “You don’t want to deliver something that feels like ‘peak 2024’ and as the years go by, it feels utterly defined. By looking more broadly, you find things that have a timelessness and an enduring quality while still having freshness about them.”
Richards Stanisich founders and architects Jonathan Richards and Kirsten Stanisich
Sarah & Sebastian’s new Armadale store designed by Richards Stanisich | Photography by Lillie Thompson
3. Adaptive Reuse
Stanisich and Richards approach historic homes with a balance of respect and contemporary reinvention, retaining its original character while breathing new life into the space. As Stanisich explains, “I think something that’s really important to us is not being too conservative or precious about the history of a house—obviously understanding it and looking into its past is important, but really making it right for now.”
“Heritage alone doesn’t give a home importance,” Richards says. “It’s really about finding what’s magical about the house, keeping that and making it work,” he adds. Furnishings play an integral role in this approach, often blending clients’ personal items with curated pieces to highlight personality, rather than simply adapting to a particular era or style that reflects the home’s past.
Photography by Lillie Thompson
Photography by Lillie Thompson
Photography by Lillie Thompson
Wunulla Road by Richards Stanisich | Photography by Felix Forest
4. Holistic Design Processes
Richards and Stanisich advocate a holistic design philosophy that treats space, furniture, and fittings as parts of a unified narrative. They see architecture and interior design as fundamentally inseparable, with interiors requiring the same rigour in form, materiality, and emotional impact as architecture itself. Rather than concealing a building’s structure, they use interiors to reveal and enrich it. “For me, the whole design process begins with an understanding of what’s going on architecturally,” Richards says.
“It could be about the windows, the vistas through the house outside, how the garden is framed. And to me, that reveals the opportunities for the interior,” he adds. This integrated approach allows them to maintain a consistent vision across every surface and object. As Richards explains, “It’s that ability to take a holistic view, even if you’re just charged with looking at the interior spaces, that enables you to think creatively and differently and to work also within the constraints of what you’re presented with—to bounce off those constraints.”
Vue De La Cote by Richards Stanisich | Photography by Felix Forest
5. Intuition and Trust in Collaboration
Richards Stanisich emphasise that impactful design is built on a strong, trust-based relationship between client and designer. This partnership creates space for meaningful exploration beyond Pinterest boards or social media. “We really want to get deeper—to understand the people in the house and the culture of their family or their practice that can’t be captured through images.”
Finding the right alignment is important to the designers, allowing them to design spaces that feel deeply personal, authentic, and thoughtfully crafted. “The key to all of these projects is having clients that back you, that inspire you, and that really want you to explore your ideas,” Stanisich says. “We like to set our sights high and recognise how good design can impact people’s lives—and if the client or builder isn’t on board, it just doesn’t happen,” she adds.
Wunulla Road by Richards Stanisich | Photography by Felix Forest
Wunulla Road by Richards Stanisich | Photography by Felix Forest