TACTILE INTEGRITY
With the completion of her forever home in Los Angeles, Jodie Fried of Armadillo shares her keen insights on designing for a higher purpose
“When I'm in a space that makes me feel something, I try to deconstruct its potency”
‹‹ Volunteering as an aid worker in Africa, Ghoniem next embedded deep in Maasai land in Kenya, living in a manyata hut while assisting with the building of schools. Then, came “an amazing year-long trip through Sri Lanka, Spain, Vietnam — more volunteer work — Cambodia and Laos,” she says, adding that being a long-term itinerant in unstable territories soon made Sydney seem all the more appealing. So, she returned in 2008, beginning a band with her brother Ben. “My cousin plays the violin, my best mate plays the drums and another friend plays the keys. We became this awesome all-girl band , with Ben, called The Conversations.”
Ironically, interiors work became a way to pursue music, until one design practice boss took exception to her lyric-writing on his watch. Autonomy over her time became the determinant of setting up Amber Road, the design firm that Ghoniem cofounded in 2013 with her landscape architect sister, Katy Svalbe.
“We did that for seven years and then went our separate ways,” she says with the exasperated add that no matter how hard she tries to leave design, it always drags her back. But humility prevents her from mouthing ‘talent’ as the reason she remains tethered to a drawing board and the demands of clients so enamoured with her ‘something other’.
Hazarding a guess at what that ‘other’ might be, Ghoniem says she never looks to the work of others to help materialise her idiosyncratic schemes but sources memories of the many far-off places that have made her emote. “I try to evoke a feeling not a visual,” she explains with excited description of the Kuwait penthouse scheme that identifies in the office as ‘Mies and Marni’ — shorthand for Sama and her partner’s competing minimalism and maximalism.
Ghoniem continues: “When I’m in a space that makes me feel something, I try to deconstruct its potency but always come to the conclusion that it’s not designed. It has literally grown, memory upon patron memory, and that’s what I truly love about interiors, when it reflects the wonders of a world you can’t control.” ysg.studio