2021 Australian Interior Design Awards: Interior Design Impact – joint award

Jury comment

Russell and George has used the design of its workspace to liberate its own business, with opportunities to reinvent the process of design across our profession. The impact of this project cannot be appreciated from the photographs alone; it resides in understanding that Space and Time is a spatial and organizational representation of a first-principles rethink of how a practice can be imagined. As design entrepreneurs, the team has taken risks to progress their own process of design, with potentially far-reaching impacts for the broader profession and how we work. The highly adaptable workspace equally supports the team, enables prototyping and small-scale manufacture in the workshop and, importantly, provides space to host events. Two to three events per month provide sufficient income to cover business costs. This gives the team the freedom to be selective in the work they take on, and allows them greater time to research new materials and processes. In turn, this approach has led to significant innovations in how Russell and George designs and delivers projects and products. In the modernist tradition, Russell and George’s work encompasses design and prototyping across architecture, interior design and industrial design. Through its workspace and the subsequent outcomes that evolved from its design and construction, Russell and George is reacting to the aspects of our profession that no longer reflect the modernist tradition: fees and program. A desire for more time to actually design and provide high-quality, well-detailed spaces and products that are not eroded by so-called “value management” has lead Russell and George to re-evaluate the traditional methods of design and project delivery. Using the design and construction of its workspace as a prototype, the team used coding to develop a protocol for procurement and documentation. The resulting program automates processes and documentation to preserve important briefing and design time. Initially an in-house process, the program is currently being developed into commercial design software for use by the architecture and design industry. Space and Time has exceeded its own ambitions. It is strongly evident that the organizational model that the design supports has not only transformed Russell and George, but offers some valuable and poten-tially cathartic innovations to the rest of our profession. Watch this Space (and Time)!

Design statement

The experience of space isn’t static, yet our interiors generally have static functions. What if space responded to mood in a human sense and changed based on what the general feeling was at the time?

Dinner, breakfast, lunch, exercise, work, party, special event, art, experience, workshop, making, creating, going to the movies, gardening, socializing. These activities can all occur in this space – all within a framework that adapts specifically to each use. The space is designed to nurture, by stimulating a sense of possibility. This is Space and Time. One space, multiple functions, multiple business, multiple human experiences governed by only one factor – time of day. Use of the space drives the reconfiguration and adaptation of the interior, using dynamic and re-usable elements. Spaces are never left idle and unused – simple and mobile elements are endlessly reconfigurable and have multiple functions. An overhead lighting system – a combination of diffuse sunlight and smart LEDs that can adjust to ambient conditions and colour tones – is used along with custom furniture designed and manufactured in house specifically for this project. Space and Time is all-encompassing and designed to be a complete interior work.

Design practice — Russell and George

Project team — Ryan Russell, Byron George, Rowan Hutchinson, Brady Hallam, Kim Wright, John Mackenzie, James McAllister, Rocky Pepper, Wendi Kinerman, Ivan Holmes

The Award for Interior Design Impact supported by Signorino. The Australian Interior Design Awards are presented by the Design Institute of Australia and Artichoke magazine. For more images of this project, see the Australian Interior Design Awards gallery.