;)
SEARCH
OR VIEW ALL PROJECTSOR GO BACK TO SEARCH RESULTSOR VIEW ALLPROJECTS BY ARCHITECT GHETTO DESIGNOFFICE PROJECTS2003 PROJECTSPROJECTS IN SYDNEY |
Featured in Skyscraper |
 Gateway Plaza |
As with many other people, New York was a revelation to Paula Hanigan when she went there for the first time. In her case, it was a wake-up call to start doing things her way. 1 was looking at different kinds of design in New York," she says, "and thought I could do better." Hence, the decision to go out on her own as an interior designer and set up Ghetto Design.
In fact, the journey to Ghetto was more indirect than that because Hanigan had begun her professional life as a nurse. Then followed what she describes as her second career in survey draughting. Finally, she graduated in Interior Design from Enmore TAFE in Sydney in 1994, leading to a position as senior interior designer with the Patterson Group.
But in time, frustration set in, partly because it was a case of working for other people when she more and more wanted to work for herself. And it was also the kind of work, which she sums up as "just give me five offices and twelve desks" - corporate interior design which is often still content with bottom-line, purely functional solutions. Hanigan found herself looking for something "more out there" - creative, quirky design.
So, the epiphany in New York was a case of "Finally, I found my way to what I was meant to be doing." Even the name, Ghetto, had its origins in New York where, in the meat packing district, she realised that people from ghettos always looked different, distinctive. At the same time, they were (like Hanigan Nerselo forever trying to get out of the ghetto. Nonetheless, she doesn't want to put too much store on the name which really started out as a joke when she enlisted friends to help her find a name for the new company.
Her fit-out for Trellini - IT consultants in a joint venture with Reuters to provide a high technology product for the international finance sector manages to bring together Hanigan's interior design expertise with a challenging brief. Overlooking Sydney's Circular Quay, the space was a relatively small 20Orril. The client wanted flexibility. The space was to serve as an office, but one which could be used to entertain clients ind for seminars for up to sixty people. 3o the kitchen, for example, can turn iself into a bar and what works as in office one minute can look like a five star suite the next. Appropriately, for a business working out of the same building is the New York-based financial services F company, Bloomberg, Trellini like fish i lloomberg offices all over the world ~ature fish tanks as a calming element nd when they recently refurbished their ~ydney office (see Indesign #12), Trellini leapt at the opportunity to pick up a second-hand fish tank, re-sprayd it white and made it a feature of the new Hanigan fit-out.
Hanigan shares office space with another Enmore graduate, graphic designer Sue Paterson, at the St Peters end of King Street, Newtown. It is not the most salubrious part of town, but it is one in transition - just like Ghetto which is currently moving away from corporate interior design, and looking for differ creative challenges.
|
|
