Home Work Hub

Sydney Home Show

The Home Work Hub by Catherine Whitting was an interactive exhibition interior designed for the Sustainable rooms by design feature area of the May 2016 Sydney Home Show.

The Home Work Hub is dark, moody, residential multi-functional work space that adds elegance to an industrial aesthetic and is designed to flexibly adapt to the fast needs of family life where our work life boundaries blur. It was featured in the daily stage seminars on the use of colour in residential interior design.

When working with digital technology and blue light screens the Home Work Hub provides an earthy grounding space to feel connected and nurtured. Resene paints and OneWorld Collection furniture is featured throughout the interior. Resene sample colours painted on wine glasses provide visual clues to colour combinations.

Two giant arched iron wall mirrors, are fixed to the rear wall, that has been transformed into an industrial urban interior, reflecting the charm of old industrial buildings, through the application of a raw untreated concrete digital graphic mural from the Factory II collection from Resene ColorShops. Life is allowed to leave its mark and this large scale digital graphic wall mural provides a cool homeliness in a digital work environment.

This concrete wallpaper imbues weathered traces of wear and a tactile contrast that frames the large reflective iron arched mirrors, creating a portal like space on the rear wall. Combined with the warmth of two trestle A frame fir wood desks, it creates the link between the traces of the past and a cosy yet contemporary here and now.

The trestles, nestled together at right angles, enable two people to work independently, or sync up to the large 40 inch Samsung smart TV and work collaboratively online. Custom made cantilevered bookshelves crafted by the family team at Zarella kitchens organise a myriad of books and artefacts on a Resene Fuscous Grey palette from the Karen Walker Paints collection. The wall is basecoated in Resene Magnetic Magic paint and with a topcoat of Resene Write-on Wall Paint that transforms the wall into a functional magnetic whiteboard. Resene Fuscous Grey was chosen to encourage the Home Show visitors to play with dark colours in small interiors. The warmth in the grey palette was echoed in the sustainable natural timber furniture. Resene Alabaster completes the colour palette on skirtings and doors.

With twelve square metres to work with, this room was set up within 12 hours of the show starting.

Client: John Eussen
Interior designer: Catherine Whitting
Photographer: Marian Riabic
Project: Resene Total Colour Awards 2016