Emerging interior design firm Studio Manifold won the highly competitive Residential Single category at the 2025 Interior Design Excellence Awards with its design for Gruyere Farm, a contemporary Yarra Valley retreat with mid-century roots.

2025 was a milestone year for Studio Manifold co-founders Morgan Novy and Lachlan Cooper, even if they have been too busy to take stock. Their fifth year as a practice, split between Melbourne and Sydney, has coincided with the completion of many of their early designs, bringing a body of work to life.

“The ones that we’ve recently completed feel… the most like us and how we want to move forward,” Cooper tells Australian Design Review.

‘Carefully editing’ a Yarra Valley home 

One of those projects was Gruyere Farm, a sensitive restoration of a 1986 John Pizzey home in Victoria’s Yarra Valley that had seen better days. Completed in March, the project beat 71 others shortlisted to take out the IDEA 2025 Residential Single category, sponsored by Signature Appliances powered by Miele.

Juror Meryl Hare commended the rural property’s “refreshing” lack of inhibition, calling it an authentic standout in its category.

“The coordinated approach of architecture and interior curation has delivered a light-filled home of honest materiality, such as recycled timber and terrazzo, juxtaposed with glazed tiles in shades of blue and green,” she said. “It sits comfortably in the surrounding landscape.”

Studio Manifold was brought onto the project by acclaimed interior stylist Simone Haag, after the pair had worked on Haag’s house. 

“She’s honestly been such a massive believer in us and obviously we weren’t a super well-known studio when she got us on board for her space and Gruyere,” Novy says.

The scope of the design work for Gruyere Farm started with a kitchen renovation and snowballed into a full-scale redesign of the whole home.

“We walked in and it was so cold and it had not a lot of soul, but you could tell that the bones were so perfect for the context,” Novy explains. In their submissions to IDEA 2025, Studio Manifold and Haag both describe treating the home as a “living story” – “one that didn’t need rewriting, just careful editing”.

“From the start, we really wanted the interiors to feel like they’d always been there and not like this modern approach had been dumped into this beautiful 1980s place,” Novy says. 

Collaborative interior design and material-led storytelling

A custom scalloped front door – made in collaboration with Mark Tuckey – beckons you inside a home that has had its soul restored. The door references the building’s curves, one of the key architectural features the team retained, alongside slate floors and timber in the walls and ceilings. Meanwhile, practical updates like double-glazing, hydronic panel heating and new doors have discreetly improved thermal performance.

Textural elements such as recycled timbers, slate, terrazzo and raw brass echo the rugged surrounds and contrast against adventurous pops of blue and green on the bathroom and kitchen tiles. 

According to Cooper, the client’s trust hardly waivered, even as builders remarked on the glossy green takeover of the conservatory, which looked extra bright when painting was in progress. “The [clients said], ‘It’s just paint. If we don’t love it, we’ll change it.’ And luckily it got painted. We did all the flooring and the furniture went in and I think it’s one of their favourite rooms of the house.”

Haag’s team’s decorative scheme wove together vintage classics – like a reupholstered Eames lounge chair and leather Cab dining chairs – with contemporary Australian design, including Bieëmele’s sculptural objects, Lana Launay’s Modular Launay lamp, and ceramics by Scott Elk. A striking perspex chandelier anchors the dining space, while warm, low-glow lighting casts a gentle amber hue across the interiors as dusk falls. 

Novy says Studio Manifold and Haag’s visions worked “seamlessly”. “There was a beautiful mutual appreciation of each other’s work and we all knew what the brief was. I think we were all on the same page,” she says,

Joint glory for Gruyere Farm

The teams achieved separate recognition at IDEA 2025. In a rare feat, Gruyere Farm was named the winning project in the Residential Single and Residential Interior Curation categories. Residential Interior Curation was awarded first and Haag called Studio Manifold up to the stage to share in her glory, unaware they would soon return to accept their own accolade.

It was a moment Novy and Cooper weren’t expecting either.

“We really didn’t go in there thinking that we would get that category at all,” Novy says. “It was really great to see other emerging practices being acknowledged that night as well [in] the Hospitality and the Retail categories, and even the commendations for Residential Single.”

Back at Sydney’s Ace Hotel after the ceremony, the three collaborators finally had a moment to share a victory tipple – their first since the project finished.

“It definitely does feel like it has been a big year,” Cooper says. “Often you don’t really reflect too much because usually you’re tired at the end of the year and you wrap up and then you go straight back into it. But I think with awards like IDEA and The Local Project one [that Studio Manifold also won] – you do stop and you do reflect a bit more on those achievements and what you’ve actually done in the year.”

Looking ahead to 2026, Novy and Cooper have a hotel development they have been working on in Byron Bay that is due for completion early in the year. They’ve also got a rural property on the horizon, a full house design in inner western Sydney and a quick-turnaround retail project in Melbourne slated to open in July.

“We’ll be refreshed and rested and the creative juices will be flowing,” Novy says.

Lead image of Studio Manifold with Bing Lee brand and marketing executive and account manager Jesse Lee and CEO Lionel Lee by Scott Gick Photography.

View all the winners of IDEA 2025 here.