From the hottest new hotel to launches at industry’s most loved event: this local design house is making its mark

Deep in Melbourne’s bustling CBD, Kennedy Nolan’s newest work reaches to the heavens in a mix of playful curiosity and referential bliss. As the latest boutique hotel to hit Australia’s design capital, Melbourne Place has swept the local award scene, impressing design and hospitality circles with its use of colour, texture, material, and tone for a guest experience that feels at once “visually fresh but uncannily familiar”.

Inside the hotel, Kennedy Nolan’s distinct design vernacular is echoed in the furniture choices. Think rounded silhouettes and rich materiality, pieces crafted by brands that understand how to take expected forms to make them transcendental. In the hotel’s mezzanine guest lounge and rooftop restaurant, its pieces by local design house SBW that fit this brief, with a selection of chairs, sofas, and coffee tables that create functional spaces with a personality. 

The brain child of Lisa Vincitorio and Laelie Berzon, SBW is an Australian design house that specialises in producing furniture that marries the functional utilitarian aspect with visually captivating form. Drawing on their respective backgrounds in Industrial Design and Visual Arts, SBW is expressive and considered; a melding of two industries to create a brand that is deeply unique. 

At its heart, SBW was shaped by the desire to bring an imaginative and homegrown furniture brand to the Australian market. Designed and manufactured in Melbourne, SBW’s end-to-end service takes care in crafting unique pieces from ideation to fabrication, designing with a local lens that caters to a diverse and international market. Now celebrating 14 years of operation, the brand has become something of a go-to for the local design set, with pieces featured in commercial, hospitality, and residential projects around the world. 

Their latest evolution will coincide with Saturday Indesign, with SBW set to open their Collingwood showroom for the iconic event. On Saturday September 6, event attendees will step into the SBW world, coming face-to-face with their adaptable range and seeing many of their iconic pieces in-situ. From the sweeping curves of the Enfold Sofa, to the sculptural balance of the Baso Dining Timber table, much of SBW’s new collection will be on display, along with showroom staff who can explain the brand’s end-to-end service and customisation opportunities. 

Along with this, Saturday Indesign will see SBW unveil new additions to its recently released Len collection, reimagining the form of the chair and barstool into an easy chair and dining table. A whole new dining collection is also set to launch, while the Klara chair will evolve into a product family, with an accompanying sofa set to feature in the Melbourne event.

Whether featured in one of Australia’s most lauded new design projects, or popping up at the most anticipated industry event of the year, SBW are synonymous with design culture. Harnessing their unique juncture of industrial design and the arts, their collection is infused with personality, with pieces that are not only exacting in both detail and execution, but are somehow familiarly unfamiliar, finessing the expected to carve out a distinct SBW vernacular.