'Simplicity is my mantra' – Daniel Boddam joins the IDEA jury for 2026

Daniel Boddam is an architect and furniture designer who founded his own eponymous practice in 2013. He’s also the seventh and final jury member announced for IDEA 2026.

As the son of two architects, a creative career was always on the cards for Daniel Boddam. His mother Jeannette Dorta, and father, David Boddam-Whetham ran the architectural and interiors practice Boddam Whetham Dorta. “Mum comes from Venezuela,” says Boddam. “She’s great and she ended up mainly doing the interiors of their projects and the furniture curation.

“So I picked up both worlds from my parents and I was always doing art and sculpture and that sort of thing. I was very immersed in the arts.”

He wound up with several strings to his creative bow. As a teenager his first love was furniture design and he was looking at pursuing it as a career, until he realised that all of his favourite designers were actually architects. Then there’s that abiding love of art. Following his architecture studies at the University of Sydney and a stint working part-time for his father, he spent 18 months in London where he divided his time between being an architect and being an artist.

*Urban Sea House, Mosman. Photo: Timothy Kaye.*

Juggling two such immersive disciplines was always going to be a struggle and, by the time he returned to Australia, he was working full-time as an architect. He rejoined the family business and built up that practice until his father became ill. Fortunately, Boddam-Whetham has since recovered, but Boddam took that moment to reconsider his path.

“Basically, we were doing everything,” he recalls, “anything we could get our hands on. We didn’t have much clarity or direction, so I refounded the business in my own name and focused on residential. My heart was always in smaller projects and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

One career is never enough

First loves will out, however, which is why only a year into running his own practice, Boddam returned to furniture design. For those of us who find it hard enough to concentrate on one discipline at a time, Boddam is quite the inspiration. “I really like the creative challenge of doing multiple things at once,” he explains. “Even when I was painting, I would find myself doing three paintings at once. I find operating in threes really suits my Gemini personality,” he jokes. “I really like jumping around between different things. I don’t like being pigeonholed.”

To facilitate this fluidity he deliberately keeps his studio small and compact. The current team numbers six – along with Boddam himself, there is a full-time administrator, a full-time architect, a staff member looking after the branding and marketing, a photographer and a sales agent responsible for the furniture side of things. Boddam says he makes a point of only hiring people who really know what they’re doing.

“I don’t have time to micromanage people,” he says. “So I need everyone to perform really well. I rely on the team to do that and I set the creative and business direction.

“I’m very big on systems and processes,” he adds. “I built a lot of systems and processes for the business to give us flexibility and autonomy, so that we’re able to achieve the milestones.

“I’m able to do so many things by keeping the studio small and being very hands-on,” he says. “And being selective with the projects that we take on, so I can have time to do furniture as well as the holistic architecture and interiors.”

*Villa Carlo, Mosman. Photo: Pablo Veiga (Villa Carlo).*

Expanding operations

While limiting the size of the team, Boddam has grown the studio’s footprint in other ways – recently opening its first showroom in Bronte. “I did do a pop-up in Melbourne for two and a half years,” he says. “Though people laugh and say ‘Oh, that’s not really a pop-up!’ But in my mind it was always an experiment to branch out from Sydney. Except then I had an identity crisis, because people were asking, ‘where are you? You’re in Byron [where Boddam partly relocated during COVID and still retains a property, now rented out], you’re in Sydney, you’re in Melbourne… We don’t get it!'”

The new showroom is appointment-only, business-to-business and curated as more of a residential space in a similar way to the apartment takeovers at Milan Design Week, or 3daysofdesign, says Boddam. “I really enjoyed the private apartment experiences of some of the designers [at those events]. The way they curated retail wasn’t stiff and wasn’t unapproachable. That’s what this space is in essence. It’s not a space for transacting, but more for communication and establishing relationships.”

Considered simplicity

It’s not hard to see a through line when it comes to Boddam’s work. Whether it be architecture, interiors or the furniture pieces within, a ‘poetry of reduction’ is apparent. “Simplicity is probably my main guiding mantra,” says Boddam. “It’s really everything that I do. I try to make things as simple and refined and elegant as possible – from writing emails to the business structure to meeting minutes. Our mantra is simplicity across all things and trying to cut complexity down, which I perceive as the enemy.”

This naturally translates to the projects as well as the processes. “I really try and create a sense of calm in in my work,” says Boddam. “I just don’t like overly cluttered and overly busy environments. I really feel more at ease and more comfortable, with the ability to think creatively, in a space.”

For furniture this means “not making loud noises, but trying to look for originality within the craft and within proportion,” he says. “The same goes for architecture, where I’m looking at how things respond to the local environment, the streetscape, the client brief… but also how to make the buildings really belong, while still having a sense of originality, so that they’re not boring or stale.”

It’s no surprise then that this preference influences his choice of materials too. “I like real honesty of material. Depending on where the project’s based, I’ll look at a material study that would suit that area,” he explains. “For instance, there’s a house I just did in Palm Beach. We selected a Krause Grey Ghost brick, which picked up on the sand qualities of the beach and the coast. It had a nice sort of tactile quality. It was really elongated, but each piece was slightly rough so it had a nice texture all the way through.”

*Melbourne pop-up shop. Photo: Timonthy Kaye.*

Other times, he says, timber architecture may suit the location. “So we’d do a deep dive into timber, or if a client really wants cast concrete, we’d look at ways of working with that. It’s all about honouring the craft and the materials.”

Honouring the profession

Expanding his experiences in the A+D industry, Boddam has now joined the jury for the 2026 Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). “I haven’t done it before, so I thought it’d be fun,” he says. “I like the program as well. I haven’t been able to submit an entry every year, but it’s certainly an award I recognise and and enjoy seeing and participating in. I also like the furniture and object component. I’m very big on Australian made – all my products are made locally in Australia to order. So that was was appealing, and seeing the emerging talent, as well as my colleagues in the interior space.”

What will he be looking for in his first time judging?

His answer isn’t much of a surprise… “Probably originality of thought and critical thinking,” he says. “And sustainability and whether it’s unique for Australia or a pastiche of something else.”

And what about the converse? Is there anything unlikely to get the Boddam thumbs-up? “Probably opulence,” he says. No surprises there, either…

Entries for IDEA 2026 close on 30 June with no extensions. To find out more and apply visit the website.

IDEA 2026 would not be possible without our overall sponsor Miele, alongside sponsors Crafted Hardwoods, Clipsal, Cult, Designer Rugs, ForestOne, Herman Miller, Roche Bobois, Laufen, Signature Appliances powered by Miele and Zenith. We are eternally grateful for their continued support of IDEA and of Australia’s design community. We are also hugely thankful to our event partner Axolotl, which helps the IDEA gala sparkle even brighter.