The decision for this year’s Editor’s Medal was not made on aesthetics alone. For me, 2021 was a year of retrospection. Like a lot of Melburnians, there was plenty of time for reflection on where Australian design stands and where it should be headed if we are to truly be responsible and ethical practitioners. Beauty for beauty’s sake and ostentation at the abandon of everything else are not the only things that should drive us. Which brings me to Breathe.
The Melbourne studio has been designing sustainably and consciously for much longer than the past 12 or even 18 months. Its ethos predates pandemics, IPCC reports and 11th-hour climate conferences, but it is in one of its most recent projects that Breathe demonstrates unparalleled mastery in community and environmentally minded design.
One of Australia’s first hospitality projects to be completely carbon neutral in operations, Ona is exceptional. The Canberra-based roaster makes its Melbourne debut in an understated Brunswick warehouse conversion that is as inviting, humble and personal as it is beautiful, touching lightly on its site with raw and recycled materials and a multilevel amphitheatre that, in time, will run wild with greenery.
When combined with the equally magnificent multi-residential Breese Street (completed in collaboration with DKO Architecture and Milieu), Breathe proves that, even in the most difficult of categories, categories traditionally defined by their excess and temporality, it is possible to design without ego.
Pictured: Ona Coffee, Canberra
