Our favourite Australian architect Scott Weston has been giving us an inside view of his latest project, a fabulous fantasy Marie Antoinette beauty salon. Here’s his latest update.

“The thing that I really enjoy is the nose to the grindstone & watching a project evolve and become just like our models we originally present to the clients. We like nothing better than to nut out all the details & mock things up prior to manufacture & installation. For the hair salon we are doing in Sydney we are having the perimeter wall panels digitally printed on 3mm solid grade laminate panels to withstand chemicals & sprays in the cutting room. I’ve attach various scale mock-ups of the cutting station walls with the final being at scale 1:1 so we can check the graphic quality & linework- it is spectacular & we have designed it to emulate a French Apartment Lithograph. Other areas & furniture items will be built & then finished or laid up in the digital printed laminate to continue the look & feel throughout the salon. I’ve also included some very beautiful bespoke pieces of furniture and the corresponding study models currently being built for a Client. The table seats 16 people & is turned timber & will have a resin table top in matching colour in tomato red gloss. The tansu cabinet is finished in Walnut veneer & gloss laminates internally. Once again the as built joinery pieces look just like the models. Happy Client & yes happy Architect!”

Beautiful crisp white light. Colours that jump from the image. Neutrals that cocoon and entice. These wonderful images are from the portfolio of Miki Duisterhof at rep site Marge Casey + Associates. Click on over and check out the other portfolios. Miki’s food and lifestyle portfolios are just as inspiring.

OK, OK I’ll stop real estate stalking as soon as I share just one more house. Now this one I could move right into. LOVE the art and the sense of space. It’s in Melbourne so it has a fabulous city going for it as well. If only my office looked like that first photo. Dreaming again I guess. Now back to designers, stylists and photographers.

Remember the fashion/accessory/jewellery maxim of removing one piece before you leave the house? It sprang to mind as I landed at these house while real estate stalking. Bold use of colour and interesting art. High end furniture and fabulous finishes. Is it just me though or does this house need to “take a few pieces off”? Perhaps it just highlights how a professional photographer could have us all swooning about this home while a real estate agent just needs to fit it all in. What do you think?

Something a little different this week. The David Hicks Book of Flower Arranging, Introduction by Julia Clements, Marshall Cavendish Publications, 1976. By this stage, according to the dust cover, David had written at least 5 of this style of little book on everything from decoration to “living with taste”. A superstar of 60s and 70s design cashing in on his fame? Is nothing new? The book is full of not only lovely and often not so dated flower arrangements but also Hick’s beautiful tablescapes. In the middle of winter here I am dreaming of spring!