This year’s IDEA Awards highlighted some remarkable work from 2025, including a Brisbane restaurant full of novelty, an earthy house renovation that did more with less and the adaptive reuse of a former mechanic workshop into a creative studio.
At the 2025 Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in Sydney, there were several outstanding projects, but no project was awarded more than Hong Kong-inspired Brisbane restaurant Central, designed by J.AR Office. J.AR Office’s Jared Webb got up on stage no fewer than three times, for Emerging Designer of the Year, the Hospitality category and Overall Project of the Year, complete with palpable amazement and wild hair flying. At one point he said if he’d known this would happen he would have had a haircut. Simply called Central, the restaurant is situated in a basement in Brisbane’s CBD, with an illuminated gridded ceiling and the chef positioned in the centre of the space creating a sense of real drama, juxtaposing the precision of the grid against the roughness of the walls.
The winner of Designer of the Year went to Adelaide’s Studio Gram, well known for their hospitality projects, but this year awarded in the Institutional category for Pembroke Middle School John Moody Centre, and the Workplace Under 1000sqm category for its own office Brompton studio, situated in a former mechanic workshop. The use of timber and soft lighting, as well as elements like a large round paper light shade, soften the industrial character of the interior. Studio Gram was also highly commended in the Hospitality category for Coopers Brand Home.
Also winning more than one category was Gruyere Farm in Victoria’s Yarra Valley – Studio Manifold won the Residential Single award and Simone Haag won the Residential Interior Curation award for the same project that both studios collaborated on. The project is a renovation of an existing home designed by John Pizzey in 1986 and has been thoughtfully layered with contemporary and vintage pieces, with materials like recycled timber, slate, terrazzo and raw brass bringing an earthiness to the project.
Other notable winners of the night included Miriam Fanning from Mim Design – who won the Gold Medal for her body of work, advocacy as a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia and mentorship – Breathe Architecture, which won the Enduring category for The Commons and the Event category for NGV architecture commission Home Truth, Ed Linacre, who won the Sustainability category for his recycled paper lantern for Readings, and Ross Gardam, who won Object, Furniture and Lighting (Professional) for his lighting design Relic.
The full list of winners is on the ADR website now.