COX director Brooke Lloyd will join Melissa Bright and Davina Bester on the jury of the 2024 Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA).

Early bird entries to IDEA are open now until Sunday 14 April 2024.

Now in its 22nd year, IDEA is Australia’s longest-running independent architecture and interior design awards program with winners selected annually by a panel of seven expert industry judges.

As a director at COX, Brooke Lloyd brings 20 years of industry experience to this esteemed panel, most of which took place in London before she finally settled in Sydney five years ago.

A career highlight includes leading an adaptive reuse project of Blake Tower in the Barbican, an icon of Brutalist architecture in the UK.

“It was very humbling (and slightly terrifying) to create something within my favourite place in London,” Lloyd says.

Balancing the pragmatic with the poetic

Experience has helped Lloyd distil an interior design philosophy of “balancing the pragmatic with the poetic” and enjoying the beauty that emanates from that tension. Interior projects that are exquisitely detailed and use materials purposely, not simply as decoration, impress her most.

This philosophy is embodied by COX project, Poetica, a fiery North Sydney bar and grill. Lloyd told Australian Design Review in January that Poetica’s final design sought to forge connections with the site’s past and present and between food and theatre, fire and water, with touches of artistic whimsy applied throughout.

As a design lead at what she describes as a “chameleon-like” firm, Lloyd has had a hand in various projects, from small-scale hospitality projects like Poetica to residences, cultural forums and large-scale workplaces. Her breadth of experience has informed her progressive approach to design that blurs the boundaries of conventional typologies.

What is Lloyd looking for at IDEA 2024?

Lloyd is most looking forward to judging the Public Space category at IDEA this year. 

“These spaces make design accessible to the community,” she says.

“These spaces take a hammering given the high foot traffic so need to balance functionality and aesthetics, which is more challenging.” 

Lloyd has her eye out for projects that are “considered and clever”, and provide a different perspective or interpretation of their respective typology.

“I like the trend of rejecting trends! It’s heartening to see more timeless and enduring interior spaces being created,” she says.  

Lloyd also hopes to see sustainability become standard practice in the industry, not just a trend.. 

“I have very much enjoyed the evolution of interior projects that consider the principles of reuse, recycle and reduce.” 

Lead image supplied by COX.

Enter IDEA 2024 here.