As a Design Practice we are passionate about creating architecture that both responds to and enhances its surroundings. In establishing our new Sydney Studio home within the heart of Redfern’s vibrant urban fabric, we have respectfully maintained the striking original building façade and lightly inserted a contemporary interior as our design hub. Like the smart interior, the exterior signage is minimal, the only indication of a change of tenancy within. The heritage fabric of the original Post Office has been retained and celebrated both inside and out with the arch windows at street level providing vignettes through to the refined interior that is finished in DKO’s signature style. The palette has been deliberately reduced to black and white to forge an effortlessly elegant design. Blackened steel, delicately veined marble and broody timber joinery are the heroes of this masculine palette. Original ornate cornice details, pressed metal ceilings, timber floor boards and grand stair balustrading have all been maintained with the new insertion aiming to compliment the existing architecture. The spatial planning is lofty and linear, with the breadth of the reception joinery accentuated by the strong structural lines of the hovering pendant lighting reflecting the original post office counter. Fine grained timber joinery soars over the neatly aligned workstations, bordered on two sides by open black metal shelving units.  This openness allows colour, movement and natural light to infiltrate the space. The upper level houses an open plan design hub bathed in sunlight and mirroring the black and white palette below.