How the accomplished designer and deserving winner of this year’s IDEA Gold Medal, Miriam Fanning, found her feet in the A+D industry.

Miriam Fanning credits her mother for her curiosity about objects, places and people with her never-ending desire to find out why, how and what inspires them.

“My mother always said to me, ‘ask lots of questions, don’t be scared to ask’,” she recalls. “I think I get a lot of joy out of finding out about things and people, and that’s something I still hold dear today.”

Gold Medal winner

As this year’s recipient of the prestigious IDEA Gold Medal, the much admired designer and industry thought leader has been the head of her own eponymous practice for around aquarter of a century. Mim Design now has a team of around 27 and Fanning has long been keen to share that formative advice with them too. “I always say to the staff, ‘don’t be scared to ask questions’,” she says. “It’s a really great thing because you learn so much and youalso find out things that are quite unexpected.”

It’s clearly an approach that works. The studio has racked up numerous successful projects and awards since its inception. They include global acclaim for such projects as NHH Residence, which competed with more than 1800 entries and 16 other countries to take out the top prize in the Sub-Zero Wolf Kitchen Design Contest in Charleston in the US.

But it wasn’t always this way. While still at school, Fanning’s early work life included stints in retail and hospitality before she began her design career. When she did, it was that maternally inspired inquisitiveness that led her to Buchan Group in 1988. “I decided I wanted to work in a firm that was interesting and worked on many diverse projects. I didn’t really want to work in a firm that was just undertaking corporate fitouts or residential homes,” she recalls.

Life at Buchan

Her natural tenacity meant that once she’d set her sights on Buchan, her passion for her chosen career carried her through. “There was a gentleman there called Fred Wheatland and I must have harassed him for about three or four months every two weeks to see if there was a position available,” she laughs. “In the end, I think he gave up and just said ‘come in’. That was my first job.”

She remembers it fondly, but as a very different workplace to the design office of today. “All of the architects were hand-drawing with their blue lab coats on. There were people smoking cigarettes and cigars in the office. You definitely wouldn’t find that today in a workplace environment!

“And I loved being there because of the diversity of projects. They ranged from hotels to retail to master planning. And, at the time, there wasn’t a large interior design section within the practice. So, being a graduate, I took it upon myself, with Fred, to start a library. I guess that was my first experience of collaboration, where I got to collaborate with so many suppliers of materials and furniture and objects and fixtures to populate a library. And that was my first experience of learning about product, which I really enjoyed and loved.”

The power of mentorship

Fanning stayed at Buchan for 13 years and says now that, during that entire period, there was never a time she was bored or questioned her career or motives, despite the punishing working hours familiar to so many in the industry. “The majority of those days were long, until nine or 10 o’clock at night, working on deadlines. But I saw that as an opportunity to just keep learning and keep doing different things. And I was lucky to be mentored by some incredible directors, Bruce Shaw and Grant Beck in particular. They taught me all about master planning, architectural planning and development summaries, and all things that you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to learn about as an interior designer.”

She adds, with a laugh, “I’m actually surprised I didn’t drive them crazy with the number of questions that I asked throughout my period at the Buchan Group. What I loved about them was they were always very, very sharing of their knowledge.”

Memorable projects

When it comes to the memorable projects from that time, Fanning says she can’t go past one that would be extremely familiar to every Melburnian, if not Australian. “I worked on a large retail complex, which everyone would know from stage two to stage 44,” she says. “That was Chadstone. I had the opportunity to work overseas with a lighting consultant, an architectural firm and an interior design firm. I learned about the global world of what retail was and why people shop in shopping centres and precincts. And I found it interesting that retail in Australia was very different to retail around the world. And it was great to be a part of a team with the developer, with the leasing agents, the builders and [Buchan], collaborating on creating something that was going to be quite iconic.”

Those early days also gave Fanning her ongoing appreciation for the ever-changing nature of the design industry and the preferred materials in use at any one time. “Putting a library together, collaborating with different suppliers, the things that stood out to me were the new products. And what I loved was every week there was something new. The products change, they always change, even today. If products were to remain the same, interiors would never change and evolve. I was always thinking, ‘what’s next?’ This really excited me.”

Appreciation of suppliers

“And those suppliers were fantastic,” she adds. “They were also educators, which I really admired. They knew their product and were happy to share that. And they informed the team as to why you would use products, both from an aesthetic and a technical point of view. I think those collaborations were really, really important.”

That whole period of learning and acquiring knowledge and experience led to a pivotal point when she realised she was ready to stretch out her wings and start her own practice. “There was one moment that really stood out for me where I knew that I could do it,” she says now. “And I’ll never forget the day. It was a big presentation. And the person who was going to present couldn’t make it. And I ended up carrying the presentation and leading it. I just took it on with confidence. And I could answer every question. I could visualise this project and place the client into my head to walk them through a verbal 3D description of the project. I think that that was the meeting that made me realise that I really could do it and that I loved doing it as well.”

Mim Design was formally established in 2001 and the rest, as they say, is history…

Read about all the winners of the 2025 IDEA program.