In Her Element

A winning formula of science and art is the catalyst for a design aesthetic that’s pure chemistry.

- Karen McCartney

I WAS AWARE that Sue Carr, principal of Melbourne practice Carr, was a pioneer before I met her. What I didn’t realise was on how many fronts she challenged the status quo and how her multidisciplinary office has been forged out of her determination and clarity of thought. A scientist who, driven by curiosity, jumped university courses midstream to take up interior design at RMIT, Carr’s educational background ensures the place of logic, of an interest in how fixings work and of construction techniques and the architectural expression of materials. This was contrary to the perception of what interior design entailed. “Then, design’s defining role was seen as selecting the curtains and cushions,” she says. Her lifelong ambition has been to raise the profile of good design in interior spaces. “For me the concept behind any project does not delineate between inside and outside, interior and exterior – it is the whole that is most crucial – the light, the spaces, the feel, the materiality.”