Full Circle | Ed Hansen's Project at The Muse

At the corner of Toorak and St Kilda Roads, in Melbourne's leafy Domain precinct, The Muse occupies one of the city's most coveted postcodes; its thirteen-storey, 38 apartment building, with an undulating glass facade designed by Bruce Henderson Architects, shifts with the changing city light. It's a building built on exclusivity, right down to the smallest detail. Inside one apartment, that same care and attention went into something much more personal — a home designed by a son for his own parents.

Grand Soffice sofa by Francesco Binfaré by Edra, Lithos coffee table by Antonio Citterio by B&B Italia. Photo © Sean Fennessy.

Febo chairs designed by Antonio Citterio by Maxalto, Listone Giordano timber floor. Photo © Sean Fennessy

Listone Giordano timber floor. Photo © Sean Fennessy

Photo © Sean Fennessy

14p Portable Candle Table light by Bocci. Photo © Sean Fennessy

When Ed Hansen moved from Melbourne to Sydney six years ago to interview for a role at Space, he bluntly told David Hartikainen that he'd never liked Space furniture. "I was like, this one is interesting," recalls David, now Head of Interiors and Business Development, Asia Pacific at Space Atelier. "This one's got my attention." He hired him anyway and, in doing so, set in motion the working relationship that would eventually deliver one of the most intimate projects either of them has worked on, inside Melbourne’s exclusive new building, The Muse.

The two joined forces as Space formalised Atelier, its full-service interior design division, moving the brand beyond furniture and into holistic, turnkey design.

"It's about the philosophy," David explains. "Client first—how they live. Not 'this is the look I want,' but where do you have breakfast? Where do you sit? How do you actually inhabit the space?

David Hartikainen, Head of Interiors and Business Development, Asia Pacific, Atelier Design Service

For Ed, Founder and Creative Director of Australian fragrance house S’mer, that question answered itself when the client was close to home. "I know exactly how they live, exactly what they like, and what they don't like," he says. "That let me make a really specific design response, tailored to them."

Ed is quick to push back on any suggestion that this was mentorship in a conventional, hierarchical sense. “We bounced off each other from day one,” he says. David agrees. Their sensibilities differ: David’s instinct is sharp, linear and architectural, while Ed’s leans organic and sculptural. Over five years, each has absorbed something of the other’s eye. The hallway of mirrors running through the apartment is a case in point, an idea Ed borrowed from David’s design language and reshaped with a patinated finish. “It’s not something I would have necessarily done myself,” Ed says, “but I picked it up, and now it’s mine too.”

That light-and-dark sensibility runs through the whole apartment, designed to transition as you move through it so it feels brighter and more open, with materials near the entry giving way to deeper, richer tones the further in you go. It's a deliberate sequencing and a decision that can only come from knowing exactly how a family moves through a space, and where they like to land at the end of the day.

Furniture tells the same story. In the formal lounge, a propeller-shaped coffee table—for years a fixture in Ed's father's man cave—sits alongside a pair of curvaceous Poliform Saint Germain sofas by Jean Marie Massaud. "I was like, how on earth are we going to make this work?" Ed laughs. The pairing shouldn't work on paper: a masculine, mechanical object against something deliberately soft. Instead, as the light moves across the metal through the day, the table reads as almost feminine.

In the dining space, a set of Febo chairs designed by Antonio Citterio for Maxalto, upholstered in a striped fabric, anchors the sculptural Galet Dining table by Emma Donnersberg, its rounded timber base echoing the propeller table's own curves, a common thread of continuity Ed wove through different spaces. In the media room, the Grand Soffice sofa by Francesco Binfaré for Edra, all soft, enveloping curves, is set against the Lithos coffee table by Antonio Citterio, a sharp, linear piece of glass and steel that brings an architectural counterpoint to the softness found throughout the rest of the home.

Materially, the apartment leans on richness and warmth, including travertine, marble, aged brass, and underfoot, a bespoke Listone Giordano timber floor that runs throughout. "The result for Muse is only possible by working with someone who has the technology and the craft to deliver a flooring solution like this," David says. "This one tested the boundaries of what was possible, working with a product that's over 180 years old, alongside workmanship of the same heritage, using the most contemporary technology available. The result is just beautiful."

The wallpaper also reveals its own story. In the media room, a hand-painted fresco from the Italian house Glamora wraps the walls in atmospheric greens, a response to Ed's mother's long-held fascination with both clouds and trees and offering a space that both parents can feel grounded.

For Ed, the proof came in the apartment's first week, watching his parents entertain for the first time. "Everyone gravitated to the room with the trees," he says. "It's cosy, approachable and people let their guard down there." This is the sort of detail no brief could have specified, the kind only a son, designing for his own parents, would have known to factor in.