Havana House started as a 1970s residence in Ashgrove that had aged out of itself. The bones were honest, the light was generous, but every surface had drifted past its useful life. The brief came together over several conversations with Michael, the owner, who had never worked with a designer before and didn't yet know what colour could do for a room.
The 35-square-metre living, dining and kitchen sequence is the hero. Not a single square metre was added. Built-in storage and shark-nose joinery do the work that an extension would have done. Every drawer face counted. Every wall line earned its place. The room feels twice the size it is.
The kitchen splashback is a yellow checkerboard. The most 1970s thing in the room and also the most thought-through. The splashback isn't pastiche; it's the building telling you what it always wanted to be. Around it the palette pitches into olive green, dirty pink, and mustard. An updated read on a 1970s sensibility, not a museum piece.
What the original house was right about, I kept. The fluted glass at the front of the home stayed, with a striped curtain extending its rhythm vertically. The original timber floorboards were re-finished rather than replaced. Layout decisions were made around how Michael actually lives in the home, not how a magazine spread would frame it: seat heights, sight lines, the small distances between the kettle and the fridge.
Havana House was featured by The Design Files in October 2022 and selected for their Best Before + After 2022 list. Studio LaLa returned to The Design Files in February 2024, in a roundup of nine Australian designers and decorators taking on small renovations.
