In Conversation

Riverside Melbourne, with Patrick Meneguzzi

A new build for returning clients, Riverside was zoned for luxury family living across three levels on a demanding, sloping site. The brief left no room for ambiguity. “The clients had made it quite clear that they wanted everything customised and nothing off the shelf,” says Patrick. “So the obvious choice was to head to Designer Doorware.” The result: custom handles and lip pulls engineered for the home's expansive sliding glass doors, specified across a material palette of aluminium, timber and stone.

Glass Street, with Patrick Meneguzzi

A Richmond renovation of a home the clients had built twenty years earlier, Glass Street called for a full refresh — new kitchen and bathrooms, reconfigured upstairs spaces, and heavier, black-finished hardware for substantial cabinetry. It reinforced a principle Patrick returns to often: “The handles and the hardware are almost like jewellery,” he says. “You can pick a beautiful kitchen, beautiful timber — but if the handles aren't up to scratch, the result is not as impressive.”

Bullet+Stone, with Joseph Di Benedetto & Jordan

Not every story starts on a building site. Bullet+Stone began at a desk, with product designer Jordan noticing something everywhere he looked: raw, exposed concrete turning up across the best interiors he could find, in award-winning projects stripping back ornamentation for something rawer and more honest. Joseph Di Benedetto had seen it too — “we use concrete more and more as exposed, raw material on projects,” he says, “floors, pillars, walls.” Putting it on a door handle sounded, on paper, unnecessary — concrete serves no function there at all. For Jordan, that was exactly the point. “It's a value-added piece,” he explains, “a small touch that ties back to a wall or a floor and gives a project its point of difference.” Getting it right took restraint as much as invention: a thin concrete face nested carefully above a sliver of metal, never chunky, never overworked. “That's the part that makes Designer Doorware, Designer Doorware,” Jordan says. “Contemporary hardware done in a way that makes people pick it up and think — a lot of thought went into this.”