It’s funny how things happen…like the call I got from central casting at Channel Seven, out of the blue, inviting me to step in front of a camera and talk about my life for five minutes. Next thing I know, I’m plunged into the world of reality TV, which, by the way, bears little resemblance [...]
A new level of sophistication for Perth’s vibrant heart Press release from InterContinental Perth City Centre Perth, Australia, 15 October 2017: InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG®), one of the world’s leading hotel companies, unveiled InterContinental Perth City Centre today – the 6th InterContinental hotel in Australia. Nestled amidst ‘The King Street Precinct’ with a charming heritage streetscape [...]
A hotel for horses, with 850 very comfortable guest suites, is taking shape west of Sydney. Oh, and there’s accommodation for human guests too! It is quite an undertaking by the Inglis thoroughbred horse sales people who know plenty about breeding and marketing very valuable race horses but are about to learn a bit about [...]
An intern recently asked me to describe my job to her: What do you do in an average day, she questioned? Average day…well that’s not possible to describe because I don’t have them! I guess the life of a Creative Director is rather an amorphous thing. It changes shape according to the volume of projects [...]
It’s Thursday, it must be Jakarta! Life’s a bit like that as Creative Director of a design firm which has projects all over the globe. Although it doesn’t mean I’m hopping on a plane every few days, I’m happy to report, as I often have to conjure up cultures from the comfort of our studio [...]
Home stays come in many guises, not all pretty. The more time you put into researching the area, reading peer reviews and even checking out Google Earth, the luckier you're likely to get. I struck gold in Amsterdam with a home stay that was just about the most novel, romantic and comfortable stay I have [...]
Two days in our design studio at CHADA are rarely the same. We may be brainstorming a new hotel complex which has to accommodate people and well as horses - actually three times the number of very expensive thoroughbreds to human guests. Or, learning about designing beautiful living spaces for dementia patients or maybe designing [...]
Designing a carpet for the grand ballrooms of a hotel in the old town of Prague in the Czech Republic, I looked around this beautiful city for inspiration and found boulevard after boulevard of ancient buildings, including the world’s first university. Art Deco and Art Nouveau treasures are everywhere and every style of architecture before [...]
My friend, the talented photographer Anna Maryke Grey, spent seven years putting together a body of work which she exhibited last year in Sydney. I bought a work a particularly moody still life that depends so much on a perfect shaft of light that illuminates its dark centre. All the works shared this quality but [...]
I recently found myself in a glittering palace of crystal admiring chandeliers whose designs had been created for Marie Antoinette and Napoleon themselves. My inspiration is water and the project is in Jinan (China), which is famous for its natural springs and the large reservoirs and waterways which connect the city, a bit like Amsterdam. [...]
