Serving Congeniality

The spaces these architecture and interior design practices have devised for their own offices speak volumes about their values of conviviality, bonhomie and authenticity.

- Stephen Todd

THE FIRST THING you notice upon entering the new Sydney studio of interior architects Jonathan Richards and Kirsten Stanisich is that there are lots of wineglasses stacked in neat rows on the immaculate white De Padova shelving. “We wanted clients to get a sense of us as people too,” says Richards with a smile. “There’s also a lot of carefully styled white crockery. Having things on display means that everybody keeps everything nice and clean and neat.”

We all know that spaces speak volumes about the people who inhabit them. But the spaces interior designers choose to devise for themselves are like style guides to their entire practice: not just what they believe is good design, but how they want clients to perceive them as creatives. For the interiors duo (both formerly of SJB), who in late 2018 established their own practice called Richards Stanisich, a sense of conviviality is essential to the residential, hospitality and commercial interiors they design as is flexibility. In their own studio, they’ve finished the walls with waxed plaster (“it has a really lovely sheen,” says Richards) to add tactility and create a neutral backdrop for the various furnishings, fabrics or fittings they and their team of 15 are working on. To give designers and clients privacy but reference the constant motion in the practice, Richards and Stanisich created doors from Glas Italia waffled panes and designed bespoke credenzas from the same material so that their filed work is perceived, if not actually seen.