Yellowtrace Spotlight // September 2015.Our September edition of Yellowtrace Spotlight rounds up the best local and international submissions, including a not-to-be-missed design event in Sydney & Melbourne, luxury hotel-inspired bathroom collections, amazing projects by Mim...
Bar Central Stockholm by Uglycute.Stockholm's 'tankovna' Bar Central, designed by the local practice Uglycute, is a new take on a fictitious restaurant set somewhere in Central Europe. The bar centres around two horizontal 500 litre stainless steel tanks that, with the...
‘Ode to Osaka’ Installation by Manthey Kula.Architect Sverre Fehn’s competition entry for the Scandinavian pavilion at the World Fair in Osaka 1970 is part of the Norwegian National Museum – Architecture’s collection. Fehn’s proposal of a breathing structure where images of...
Bresic Whitney Hunters Hill HQ by Chenchow Little.Sydney super star architects Chenchow Little have designed the 180sqm Hunters Hill office for Bresic Whitney as an open plan collaborative office environment accommodating 15-20 staff and displaying the agencies significant collection of...
Nanchang Insun International Cinema by One Plus Partnership.Today I’m sharing with you guys a quirky little number from China’s Book City, Nanchang. Completed by One Plus Partnership in 2013, the design of the Nanchang Insun International Cinema uses the conceptual relationship between the book...
Casper Mueller Kneer Design a Perfume Fountain at the Heart of Caron’s New Paris Store.At the centre of Caron's new Paris store by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects sits the fountain, a full-height installation of hand-frosted, fluted glass tubes filled with perfume and lit from behind. Engineered and fabricated by Atelier...
Nina+Co’s Circular Eyewear Store for Monc Treats Every Material as an Asset, Not a Consumable.Nina+Co's design for Monc started with an audit of the existing site. Aluminium stair nosings were melted and recast into drawer handles and lamp dials; a reclaimed Douglas fir beam from a Staffordshire barn became the parquet, and...
Inside Yeyeland, the Shanghai Concept Store That Turns Mineral Collecting Into an Edible Art Form.Founded by a group of young mineral collectors, Yeyeland set out to share that appreciation with a wider audience, pairing real geological specimens with desserts shaped like crystalline forms. Studio 4/301 built the whole spatial logic...
Ciguë Designs Satisfy’s First Store as Two Mirroring Spaces in Paris.Cult running brand Satisfy has opened its first permanent home, and it's not one store but two. Supply and Fuel Station face off across Paris' Rue de Saintonge, designed by longtime Yellowtrace favourite Ciguë as mirror images of one...
Inside Achime Bagel, the Seoul Takeaway Where Brand Identity Lives in the Joinery.Where most small fit-outs offload branding onto signage, Jojo Workshop has built it into the joinery. At Achime Bagel in Munjeong-dong, Seoul, a modular pickup wall answers the rise of delivery orders, a timber sign board unfurls down the...
Kit of Parts: Bassike Byron Bay by Akin Atelier.Akin Atelier has been shaping Bassike's retail identity for over a decade. The brand's new Byron Bay store shows what that kind of continuity actually buys...
Experimental Roma by Rodolphe Parente Brings Marble, Steel and 1970s Vibes to a Former Bank.A former bank is not your usual place to go looking for hedonism. At Experimental Roma, Rodolphe Parente has set marble against folded stainless steel and terracotta against polished metal, with 1950s to 1970s references running...
Madeleine Castaing Meets Manhattan: Inside Child Studio’s New York Debut.Behind the terracotta façade of a Gilded Age Manhattan landmark, Child Studio has completed their first hotel and first US project: The Twenty Two New York. Seventy-eight rooms, a private members' club and a tented rooftop bar all draw on...
Rodolphe Parente Trades Flamboyance for French Classicism at Le Fernet in Monaco.Rodolphe Parente has a gift for making a new space feel as though it's always been there, timeless without falling into the trap of false nostalgia. Le Fernet is no exception—confident, warm, and considered, with just enough of the...
The Bonobo Trades Coastal Cliché for Brazilian Modernism Inside a Brutalist Byron Bay Shell.Raes' first proper step into the centre of Byron Bay comes with architecture by Richards & Spence and interiors from Manifold that skip the coastal clichés entirely, pulling from Brazilian modernism instead. Lachlan Cooper and Morgan Novy...
Soto Lab and Arcus Design an Istanbul Corner That Changes Its Mood by the Hour.A café by day, a hi-fi bar by night, and one floor plan doing both jobs. Soto Lab and Arcus's Dama in Istanbul leans on its corner site's natural light split, a Japanese-inspired timber ceiling and a considered mix of custom and vintage...
From Derelict Bunker to Modern Day Babylon: Moon Gang Ubud by YSG Studio.Bali does not want for design accommodation. What it wants for is design accommodation that belongs to Bali. Moon Gang, the five-suite hotel in Ubud by Sydney's YSG Studio, is the rare one that does...
Business on the Outside, Party on the Inside: The Fun House in Kamnik, Slovenia by Alto Design Studio.From the street, Fun House in Kamnik, Slovenia, gives nothing away. Inside, Alto Design Studio tells a different story, with an Yves Klein blue fireplace, a bright curtain instead of walls, and a basement game room drenched in...
A Window Built for Orchids: The Swiss Watchmaker Behind Vitrocsa.Read enough of what Australian architects have said about Vitrocsa and two ideas keep coming back: elegance, and how little of the window is left once the building is finished. With minimalism now a box to tick on a spec sheet, it seemed...
No Botox: Raúl Sánchez Lets a Mataró Heritage Home Wear Its Age at La Casa del Pirata.Raúl Sánchez's La Casa del Pirata refuses to over-restore. Cracks stay put, wallpaper imperfections are left alone, and the channels carved for the wall lights remain raw—no Botox here. The tension between centuries-old pattern and...
Friendship Apartment by Onoaa Studio Turns a 1941 Shanghai Apartment Into a Home Built on Trust.Onoaa Studio didn't need a questionnaire to understand how their clients live, having shared meals and working days with them for years. The result is a Shanghai home without rigid, closed-off rooms, where work, conversation and time alone...
Lilac by Bureau: 44 Square Metres, One Counter and Two Domestic Worlds.How many square metres does a home actually need? Bureau's Lilac, the smaller of two sibling apartments in Lisbon, puts the question front and centre. At 44 square metres, the refurbishment turns the old entrance hall into a kitchen, moves...
Wildcoast by Studio Kennon Builds for Bass Strait’s Wind, Rain and Salt.Positioned at the southern edge of the Mornington Peninsula, where the land meets Bass Strait, Wildcoast sits in a landscape with real intensity—unbroken wind off the Southern Ocean, driving rain, salt-thick air. Studio Kennon has let...
A Private Family Office in East Melbourne by Studio May.Most workplaces are built to perform—a client to impress, talent to attract, a brand to broadcast behind reception. A family office carries none of those obligations. Studio May's East Melbourne project sits closer to a private members'...
Inside Cinderella Deep, Geller Studio’s Raw and Ritualistic Redfern Workspace.Named after a nineteenth-century goldmine and grounded in the philosophy of Ubuntu, Cinderella Deep is Geller Studio's material-led workspace in Redfern. Off-form concrete, oxidising clay render and reclaimed heritage brick set an...
Ciguë Brings Its Material Mastery to Caudalie’s Ambitious New Paris Headquarters.For Ciguë co-founder Guillem Renard, the ambition at Rue Pavée was clear: to make the everyday workplace a space of care. That conviction, shared with Caudalie founders, shaped every decision — from the geothermal heating system to the...
Jungle’s Madrid HQ by Mil Studios Channels the Cool Restraint of 90s New York.The conceptual starting point for Jungle Madrid headquarters by Mil Studios is sharp: the corporate offices and creative studios of 1990s New York, where control and expression existed in constant productive tension. Translated across...
Perth High-Rise Office Reframed as a Gallery for Living Work.A workplace where art does the heavy lifting, and the design knows when to step back. A corporate high-rise tenancy isn't where most people would expect to find a workplace built around an art collection. State of Kin makes the case for...
This Five-storey Office Features a Suspended Conference Capsule, Prototype Workshop and Raised R&D Lab.Designed by Ippolito Fleitz Group, MAX Zone Ningbo pairs a five-storey show office with a sales centre that draws on the elegance of traditional Chinese courtyards. The show office makes a statement from the start—a suspended conference...
