The Design Writer

By guest contributor and India Correspondent Saloni Rege

Imbued in a mountain chalet aesthetic, Luna Et Sol offers a sense of serenity in a dreamy, Harry Potter-themed escape in Lower Parel, Mumbai. Spanning across 3,400 square feet, the restaurant is located in an upscale residential and retail neighborhood of South Bombay (SoBo). A testament to the convergence of design, dining and visual storytelling, this standalone establishment offers solace to visitors in a city that never slows down. 

Jade Design Studio, led by Vaishali Singh and Anshul Razdan, has created an atmospheric design that encourages spatial discovery, evoking old-world nostalgia and the evolving passage of time. A central aspiration for the designers was to create a space that blurs the boundaries between imagination and reality, urging guests to forget their existence within a vibrant cityscape and help them teleport to an otherworldly haven.

Moving away from the visual neutrality of minimalism, this restaurant consciously embraces maximalist Gothic influences through warm materials, rich textures and layering. This decision is not merely a stylistic statement, but an intentional response to the emotional fatigue of contemporary interiors. 

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By Penny Craswell

This Sydney home, located in a Heritage Conservation Area in Malvern Hill in the Inner-West suburb of Croydon, has been updated with an extension and new interiors, while also making the most of its heritage features.

Owner Caitlin Parker-Brown of interior design studio Parker Studio appointed Sydney architecture studio Potter and Wilson to work together on the heritage restoration, new interiors and a contemporary addition at the back of the site.

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By Eva-Marie Prineas and team

This year, timing aligned perfectly for the Studio Prineas team to spend seven days together in Copenhagen during 3 Days of Design. It was a first for every one of us, and experiencing the city with fresh eyes made every discovery feel that much more significant.

What makes 3 Days of Design so remarkable is that it unfolds not within the walls of an exhibition centre, but across the city itself. Private homes, workshops, showrooms, museums and public spaces open their doors, inviting visitors into the places where design is imagined, made and lived. There is an extraordinary generosity to the festival – not only in the access it provides, but in the time people are willing to share.

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By Penny Craswell

Although I wasn’t able to make it to Melbourne for this one, I feel that I have gotten to know Australian designer Elliot Bastianon’s work over the years and am excited to share information and images of his new exhibition “Analogue and Alchemy”, currently at C Gallery. Furthering his previous explorations of electroplating and patination, Elliot’s new series is made in collaboration with Punjabi master coppersmith Hari Krishan.

Elliot visited North India from his current home base in New Delhi in order to learn about the metalwork techniques of the Thathera community, who are renowned for their hand-forming copper and brass vessels, a skill passed down through the generations and recognised by UNESCO as an endangered form of intangible cultural heritage.

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By Penny Craswell

Melbourne-based designer Ruby Shields launched her new design house Studio Shields during Melbourne Design Week this year with an exhibition entitled Synthesis, including the work of over 40 artists, makers and designers in an immersive exhibition at the Bishop’s Parlour at Abbotsford Convent.

With this new show, Ruby has taken her background as an Art Director in advertising and mixed it with a love for rich colours and textures to create a show with real impact.

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By Penny Craswell

There is something wonderfully warm and organic to the feel of a wooden table, but they can also easily be scratched or stained by day-to-day living. Matt Sherwen of Sydney-based design studio Mat & Kin has come up with a solution in the form of the Revolve table.

The key to the table’s success is a rotating tabletop, which allows the scratched or stained surface to be rotated when guests arrive, revealing a pristine underside, now able to be used as a fresh table surface.

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By Penny Craswell

This redesign of a Federation semi on a long block in the leafy suburb of Ripponlea, Melbourne, focuses on reconfiguring internal rooms and a new living zone out the back that looks out onto a lush garden.

The owners, a family of three, told local architects Austin Maynard Architects that the home needed to be set up “for the next 100 years”, and that it should be warm, welcoming and friendly with environmental design at its core. Their passion for music, reading, art and plants/gardening was also key to the brief.

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By Penny Craswell

A Sydney architecture studio spent nearly a year developing a new oyster shell terrazzo for a pavilion in Sydney’s Barangaroo, designed as a public place of gathering right on the harbour.

Founded by Peter Besley and Jessica Spresser, Besley & Spresser found historical precedents in “tabby concrete”, which is made from crushed or burnt oyster. However, tabby concrete does not express the shape of the oyster: “Using whole oysters and expressing this in the material is rare and much harder to do,” says Peter Besley. “It took us over a year of experimenting and testing to get it working as we wanted, and we had to certify it uniquely ourselves.”

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By Penny Craswell

I’m excited to announce that my new book Design: Art Deco: Design Inspiration from Paris to New York will be published on 7 April by Hardie Grant North America. This is a richly illustrated sourcebook that traces the movement from the Paris salons of the 1920s to the skylines of Manhattan and the first great streamlined vehicles of the industrial age.

By Penny Craswell

“A room of my own” is a cabinet designed by London designer Nipa Doshi of studio Doshi Levien that is accessible from two sides, acting as a dressing table and a writing desk to encourage quiet moments of contemplation and self-expression.

The work is reminiscent of her work Le Cabinet for French porcelain factory Sèvres, which she described to me during an interview in Sydney in 2023 as being inspired by the shapes and silhouettes of modernist architect Le Corbusier’s work in Chandigarh.

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