Cushla McFadden is co-founder and director of Tom Mark Henry, an award-winning interior design studio based in Sydney and Brisbane. With a philosophy that’s driven by connections, and inspired by authenticity, Tom Mark Henry has completed interiors for Microsoft, WeWork and countless hospitality and residential interiors across the country, picking up awards along the way. Here, Cushla talks to InteriorsAu about her most treasured possession, the design book she returns to often and what she’d be doing if she wasn’t a designer.
1. What was your seminal design moment?
WeWork – the opportunity to fly to New York, work with their head of design on the first two Australian locations and, at the time, design for the fastest-growing company in the world just a couple of years into our own business was a crazy event that on reflection elevated us into a new era of recognition in the design community.
2. It’s your ultimate design dinner party – which four guests are you inviting?
Mies Van der Rohe. Jørn Utzon would be a fascinating guest (last year I read The House and learned so much about the process of designing the Sydney Opera House and the designer behind it). Ray Eames. Charmian Clift.
3. What’s been on your mind lately?
Our Airbnb! We have a little studio on our coastal property and we’re currently getting it ready for a busy summer.
4. What’s the most treasured design-y thing you own?
We started our humble art collection in 2018 and I still treasure the first piece we bought from Walcha Gallery of Art: Lemons and white plate by Esther Eckley.
5. What is the most inspiring space you’ve been to?
Phillip Johnson’s Glass House or Mirror Cube at Tree Hotel in Sweden – for similar reasons, the way the built structures blend in with their natural surroundings.
6. What’s a design book you return to often?
Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space.
7. What is your favourite quote about design?
“Less is more,” Mies Van der Rohe.
8. Who do you look up to in design?
Sounds cheesy, but my team! I’m surrounded by such talented and capable individuals everyday.
9. What do you consider the best project you’ve done to date?
After celebrating 10 years in business this year, it’s hard to choose a favourite from the ever-growing portfolio! However, our project West End Residence stands out as one of our best, and its also our first residential project to be completed in Brisbane since opening our studio there last year.
10. If you weren’t a designer, what would you be?
Probably an academic in design research.
11. What would you change about the state of design?
We need to get better at adaptive reuse and minimising waste. Inherently, at Tom Mark Henry we look at projects with a lens of what can be reused and adapted, however many people are still of the opinion that knocking down and rebuilding is “easier and cheaper,” which may be true, but is not the best solution sustainably.
12. What is your dream project?
A mixed-use, multiresidential project with a hotel, wellness space and epic food and beverage and retail. We would be able to flex all of the design muscles on a project of this scale.
