The 2015 Australian Interior Design Awards (AIDA) were run and won on Friday 15 May with the program’s top honour, the Premier Award for Australian Interior Design, awarded to Melbourne firm, Sibling. 

Sibling’s interior fitout of ‘DUST’, a Melbourne retail store, not only earned the practice the Premier Award ahead of an extensive shortlist of 100 finalists it also saw them collect the Retail Design Award and helped them grab the 2015 Emerging Interior Design Practice Award.

Featuring mirrored cabinetry, luminescent surfaces and animated LED screens, DUST is a new multi-sensory concept store that sells clothes, imported records and fragrances.  In praising the project, the jury notes that the designers have celebrated the stores nature as an experimental journey.

“DUST is a complex and experimental retail project that sets a precedent for concept development and is evidence of concept integrity from online experience to physical experience,” reads the jury citation.

“The designers have created a space that celebrates the experimental journey, taking the user beyond a typical retail encounter into an immersive, sensory engagement.”

 
Photography by Peter Bennetts.

Other successful projects on the night included the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne by John Wardle Architects and NADAAA in collaboration which took out the Public Design Award and the TransGrid Sydney Office by Bates Smart which was joint-winner of the Sustainability Advancement Award.

2015 also saw the creation of a new category, the Award for Interior Design Impact, which recognises the significant influence of interior design on the business, social, human resource, environmental and/or cultural outcomes of a project. BVN were the inaugural winners of the prize for their work with the Ravenswood School for Girls and the design of the school’s Mabel Fidler Building (Pictured above. Photography by John Gollings).

The winners and commendations of the 2015 Australian Interior Design Awards:

Premier Award for Australian Interior Design

Award for Interior Design Impact

Sustainability Advancement Award (Joint Winners)

Retail Design

Hospitality Design

Public Design

Workplace Design

Installation Design

Residential Decoration

Residential Design

Emerging Interior Design

Best of State