Photography: Richard Waite
A finished room rarely shows its reasoning. A guest sees good proportion without knowing it was tested against three furniture layouts before being chosen. They notice a stone finish without knowing it was selected as much for how it will look in ten years as for how it looks today. They feel a room is calm without ever seeing the vet: the extra shelf, the wrong reveal, the detail removed before anyone else saw it.
Almost none of that thinking is visible in the finished work. This Journal is where some of that reasoning is written down instead of being quietly absorbed into a room and forgotten. This is not a portfolio or a highlight reel of projects, but an ongoing record of how I think about a house: the arguments I find myself making to clients, the principles I keep returning to, and occasionally the ones I have changed my mind about.
Expect opinions here, stated as plainly as I can manage. Some will run against common practice in residential design, not for the sake of disagreement, but because the more familiar answer has often struck me as the less interesting one. Some pieces will focus on a single material or a single junction; others on the relationship between a designer and a client, or on what a city like Brisbane actually asks of a house. Very little of it will be neutral. I hope that makes it worth reading.
I say this as someone who spent twenty years developing that eye elsewhere first. I trained at UCLA, then worked under Kelly Wearstler in Los Angeles, and spent eleven years in London, first as Creative Director and then as Managing Director of Intarya, working on private residences, superyachts and Grade II-listed properties, including The Lancasters in Hyde Park. A furniture collection I designed, the Kos Collection, is manufactured by the Italian atelier Orsi and sold internationally through 1stDibs. None of that experience matters because it happened elsewhere; it matters because of what it taught me about materials, proportion and restraint, the same eye that now shapes my work in Brisbane, across Australia and beyond.
Some of what shaped that eye goes back even further, to places and people long before any of those studios, and I'll write about that properly another time. What matters for now is where that formation has landed: an independent Brisbane-based practice, Daniel Kostiuc Interior Design, working across new builds, renovations and complete furnishing projects for clients here and abroad.
Publishing any of this carries a small risk, which is really the point of calling it The Journal rather than a finished opinion. A private view can be revised quietly; a public one can be responded to and sometimes improved by someone who noticed something I hadn't, a fair trade for a little exposure. This is where that thinking will continue, in short essays on craft, materials, and the decisions that make a room work, published as they develop rather than tidied up afterwards.
Daniel Kostiuc Interior Design is a luxury interior design studio based in Brisbane, offering residential interior design and interior decoration across Queensland, Australia and internationally. Services include new builds, renovations and complete furnishing projects, with space planning, custom joinery, bespoke furniture, furniture selection, lighting, art and accessories for high-end homes.