Interior design studio Looks Generous has twice been awarded commendations in bar and restaurant categories for venues Above Board in Melbourne and Bambino in Saigon.

Returning to Melbourne after a decade in Copenhagen designing restaurants and hotels across Europe, director Georgina Prittie and co-director and founder CJ Wright have a combined understanding of how design, culture and the rituals of hospitality intersect.

Wright spent fifteen years working alongside some of the most ambitious chefs, bartenders, sommeliers and operators in the industry, delivering projects such as Capitano in Carlton and the original Falco Bakery on Smith Street. This provided him with a visceral understanding of what great hospitality actually demands from a space.

With some new venues about to open, Looks Generous covers all topics, “even the ones that are often ‘off the table’—finances, market positioning and resourcing”.

“The dining landscape is unsettled, and while restaurants and wine bars feel the strain, neighbourhood pubs are thriving. It’s tempting to reduce that to economics alone, but the answer feels emotional as well as financial. Pubs offer familiarity, softness and containment. And we’re glad to be contributing to that integral part of our urban fabric.”

Adding hospitality-orientated perspectives across typologies for people who “love to host—at home, around a table, or across a bar and want their spaces to feel lived-in, beckoning with energy, romance and joy” informs the studio’s focus.

While hospitality venues still make up most of their work, the move into residential interiors came about very naturally. “We had clients come to us specifically looking for a more hospitality-led approach to the design of their homes," says Prittie. Bringing a bar and restaurant aesthetic to residential projects, Park House in Melbourne is a response to this.

“We feel there is a quiet retreat from the vast and performative, spatially speaking. Open-plan minimalism no longer feels aspirational to everyone.” At the same time, people are staying home due to cost-of-living pressures and the fatigue of constant digital immersion. “Conversation has become something we have to work at again."

“Our residential work responds to that shift by trying to import the intelligence of high-quality hospitality back into the domestic setting to make people feel at ease.” A “sumptuous lounge-like banquette allows people to gather informally before drifting to the kitchen bench and back again” while the scullery operates as a quiet back-of-house kitchen.

This planning borrows directly from restaurant design, “how movement unfolds” and “how energy is sustained”. Drawing on a “European ethos of celebrating family, friends, great food and wine”

Looks Generous infuses their approach with interiors that are “traceable back to something true about the people who will live or gather in that space”. In addition to their residential work, the studio is looking forward to the possibility of working on smaller-scale hotels and rural retreats. “The thought of challenging ourselves by designing hospitality spaces for overnight experiences really excites us," says Prittie.

Above images: Pietro’s Residence by Max Copolov / Photos: Christine Francis.

As residential ambitions coalesce with hospitality-led design, hotels and restaurants are adopting more and more home comforts. The momentum toward warmth and enclosure is having a crossover impact. This is evident in a recent project by designer Max Copolov. With considered notions of place, a restored two-storey Palladian-style building in Victoria’s Central Highlands asserts a flair for entertaining and food culture with a sense of being at home.

Overseeing the historic building’s guest accommodation, Copolov says, “The buildings were in a state of dereliction with no heating, no water and rudimentary electricity." With hand-painted murals that date back to the 1860s and many other individual elements, “the buildings and garden glowed with promise”.

The design needed to match in approach with materials that mark their time. “I wanted to add to the unconventional building language without trying to compete or diminish what already exists.”

Lightly revising the spatial plan, the annex was turned into a one-bedroom accommodation wing for short-term stays, which opened as Pietro’s Residence late last year.

Copolov designed a kitchenette and bathroom, introducing materials that typically wouldn’t be associated with a heritage building, such as brushed aluminium. Copolov explains, “My intention was to draw focus to the past by contrasting the traditional elements of the design.”

The aluminium legs of the kitchenette were cast from a turned timber leg impression—a contemporary reference to the original domestic structure. The bathroom’s sharp modern form was also designed to meet heritage requirements. The frame doesn’t reach the ceiling and is braced so it isn’t attached to the wall. "It's only connection to the existing conditions is the pale blue tone of the tile and the pale blue window and door architraves.”

In developing the interiors, combinations of new and old create “a sense of warmth in tone and texture, with finishes and furnishings that borrow from the building’s evolving history”, says Copolov.

The design and curation of items in both Pietro’s Residence and Park House establish the notion of rooms that hold you rather than expose you. As Looks Generous notes, this is achieved by using “real materials with patina that tell a story and reveal the baptism of time.”

Main image: Park House by Looks Generous / Photo: Traianos Pakioufakis.

Emma Adams

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