Anna-Carin McNamara walks through her design philosophy: connection, simplicity, functionality, and sustainability in Scandinavian interiors. She believes a home should reflect who you are and tell your story.
A home, to me, is where we connect. It's where we connect with ourselves, it's where we connect with nature, where we connect with each other, our friends, our families. It should be a collection of all the items that you love. It should tell the story about who you are. So, Anacara Design Studio, we specialise in Scandinavian interiors. The principals that we work with, simplicity, functionality and sustainability. Simplicity, not in a austere, minimal way, but more around the simple is often the end result of having gone through a very complex process. I take pride in having a project 15 years later, still feeling current, and to me, that's sustainability. You can have a big idea sitting there, but if it doesn't work, say the benchtop is the wrong height, the tap is in the wrong place, or the chair is not sitting where you can actually sit and enjoy the view. So the functionality has something that just constantly needs to run underneath it. If it's not beautiful or has a purpose in your house, then it probably shouldn't be there. As an interior designer, which I shy away from actually telling people that I am, because most people have misconceptions, I prefer to call it interior architecture because it's very much architectural. The work that we do, we actually transform the spaces, not just the decorative aspects of it. It's much more layered than that. Ultimately, it's about trying to interpret and find a connection with the people that we design for and understand what it is their home should tell about them and what is it that they want to say with their homes, how do you find the story to tell about someone? What is their unique narrative and how you put that in matter? Because a home really is an expression of who you are put into the physical world. Every item that you have in your home says something about you. And that is our challenge. It's also our joy.
