Good vibrations
If Sydney has a current fixation with pared-back minimalism, Superfreak politely ignores it. Located on Enmore Road in Marrickville, the café – designed by the Sydney-based architecture and interior design firm YSG Studio and housed in the former (famed) Serendipity ice-cream factory – leans into texture, colour and a certain 70s-inflected sociability. Think cork underfoot, yellow walls and glossy green datums – a “soulful sanctuary” spinning plates of “nourishing eats from sunup to mid-afternoon,” describes YSG’s Founding Director Yasmine Ghoniem. It’s confident, nostalgic, slightly surreal, and – importantly – entirely committed to mood.
A partner venue of LEIF, Superfreak and YSG reflect our shared sensibility, grounded in tactility, atmosphere, and the emotional resonance of well-considered spaces. We caught up with Ghoniem and the venue’s co-owner Mike Ico to talk about how the future classic came to be, and why looking backwards can sometimes be the most progressive move forward.
Photography by Phillip Huyhn.
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Places of play
Hospitality design is often discussed through the details you can point to: the curve of a bar, the material palette, the way lighting behaves after dark, how styling can frame a menu or sharpen the mood of a room. But for Adelaide-based architecture and interiors practice studio gram, founded by Graham Charbonneau and Dave Bickmore, the measure of a venue is less about how it looks in isolation, and more about what it gives back once people are inside it.
Two such venues – Leigh Street Wine Room and Fino Vino, both LEIF partner venues brought to life by studio gram – speak clearly to this sensibility. Here, we caught up with Charbonneau and Bickmore to talk more about craft, context, and designing places where guests can shake the dust.
Photography by Josie Withers
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Natural Order
Creative projects rarely begin in the same place — sometimes it starts with a concept, other times with a collaboration. Natural Order — published by Formist Editions and documenting 20 residential Australian gardens by Sydney and Byron Bay-based landscape practice Dangar Barin Smith — is the latter: the result of a longstanding creative relationship between landscape creative William Dangar, writer Karen McCartney, designer and publisher Evi Oetomo, and photographer Prue Ruscoe.
A book we picked up for our shared perspective on nature and design — and quickly became one we couldn’t put down.
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Sink in: A guide to Australia’s most restorative wellness spaces
A warm-up for the cooler months. This is your shortlist of places bringing steam, heat and calm to the everyday.
From bathhouses to saunas and contrast therapy spaces, communal bathing and heat-led rituals are some of the oldest wellness practices we know, shared across cultures, landscapes and centuries. Today, Australia’s growing network of recovery spaces is reimagining these traditions through thoughtful design and sensory detail.
As part of our amenities offering, LEIF partners with some of the country’s most considered spaces, each shaped by calm interiors and restorative experiences. Below, discover a shortlist of places worth sinking into as the mercury starts to dip.
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