Designs For Life

A teenage prodigy from a family of architects, Medi Korasani continues to hone his passion for design as director of Melbourne-based DW Architects & Interiors

- Designs For Life

For Medi Korasani, director of the Melbourne-based DW Architects & Interiors, design has been a calling. Born into a family of architects, he grew up flipping through blueprints the way other children look at colouring books. When Korasani was a boy, his father taught him the basic tricks of the trade and forced him to think critically about finding solutions. “You know when people ask their kids to stand in the corner when they’re naughty? I would be asked to resolve a floor plan,” Korasani says with a laugh. “It was my father’s dream for me to become an architect and take over his company.”

By the time he was a teenager, he had already graduated to studying the largescale projects his father’s firm was working on around the Middle East. After a visit to the UK to learn how to use the then cutting-edge AutoCAD software for 3D rendering, he was responsible for passing that knowledge on to architects decades his senior. “I became an AutoCAD teacher for my dad’s company. I was 11 or 12 years old and I was supposed to teach all these old guys how to use a computer,” he says. “From that point on, I started working part-time at my dad’s company. I knew how to make a dollar by the time I was 15.” That sense of self-reliance and a love of problem-solving have stayed with Korasani throughout his career. The projects that make him light up are never the easy ones, but the ones with some inherent challenge.

Yet while he relishes tackling these obstacles, he’s not in it for glory. He learned at the age of 18, when he designed his first physical building, that it was better to set his ego aside. Though the project was a simple car park, it left a lasting impression on him.