Growing up gracefully
A new approach to tone and mood infuses the latest project by YSG, a 19th century heritage-listed former corner store in Sydney’s Inner West.
Yasmine Ghoniem’s star is in the ascendent. The Sydney-based interior designer and founder of YSG is blowing up the city’s preponderance for safe white-box luxury with her colour-fuelled, experimental aesthetic. At the most recent Australian Interior Design Awards the studio was bestowed a holy trinity, taking out prizes for the Best Residential Design, Best Residential Decoration and Best of State, NSW. Her latest production — a two-storey, four-bedroom, heritage-listed sandstone home in Sydney’s Inner West — pares back her trademark maximalism to reveal a more mature but no less boundary-pushing approach. Here, we talk to the refreshingly candid Ghoniem about the trials and celebrations of reworking a heritage site into something completely, yet subtly, different.
The owners got in touch with us originally because everyone in the family was using the same bathroom. The household was expanding as their daughters’ partners moved in and one bathroom was getting too much — this had to change. The bathroom was in the centre of the first floor, was very dark, and had no ventilation. We ripped out all the flat plasterboard ceilings and revealed this incredible, tall vaulted ceiling that we later handpainted. It felt very natural to us to then re-purpose the space into a light-filled library. This room is still one of my favourite spaces.
The home was originally a store and is heritage-listed. The project started about three-and-a-half years ago. The main thing I wanted to do was to open it up [by knocking down a sandstone wall] so we could create a better connection between the interior spaces. I think if we couldn't achieve that then the project was going to die — it was just pointless. There was a lot of perseverance to get it through council regulations but it was almost like, if we didn’t do it, the owners were going to sell the house.
With the main living area now opened up, the family use every single space in the house. The owners’ daughters are at university so there’s always someone studying in the kitchen or down in the living area playing the piano or reading a book. It’s really lovely. There are a lot of sandstone walls and we revealed some and rendered some — I know some people will hate that we’ve done that — but I feel like the sandstone needed to be celebrated in moments and taken away at other times. We replaced all the timber flooring, which we felt was detracting from the sandstone, and installed these beautiful sandblasted, travertine pavers with a gorgeous fat grout line, which felt more European. It was a bit of an unknown move at the time as it could’ve felt quite hectic in terms of combining travertine with the texture of sandstone but I think it works quite beautifully. There was so much brown everywhere before, which made it feel so dark and we had to lighten it up. ››