Conrad Lowry will judge the 2025 Interior Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), joining Andrew Glover, Jade Whittaker, Melissa Leung and jury chair Paul Hecker.

IDEA is Australia’s longest-running independent architecture and interior design awards program, with winners selected annually by a panel of expert judges working in the industry. Rothelowman associate of interior design Conrad Lowry is the latest to join this esteemed panel. 

An interior designer with more than two decades of industry experience, Lowry moved to Rothelowman after 16 years working as a sole practitioner. His early career focused on retail and hospitality projects, before mid- to high-end residential became his bread and butter. 

Lowry’s affable nature and meticulous design eye have yielded some fond connections with clients over the years. He was once invited to the 50th birthday of a client whose home he’d designed three years earlier, giving a rare insider glimpse at his work in action. Lowry says it was a pleasure to see the family using the private and communal rooms and terraces as per his original design.

“There’s always delight in people using things in ways that you haven’t thought of, but it’s serendipitous rather than deliberate,” he says. “To see something actually be used the way it was intended is, firstly, unusual to get the opportunity to see and, secondly, quite rewarding to know that the way you thought about it… had real impact on the way that people lived.”

Lowry’s impact has expanded since transitioning from the life of a sole trader to working at   Rothelowman, a national practice known for major city-shaping multi-residential projects like Trellis in Brisbane, Dune on the Gold Coast, and The Briscoe in Melbourne. From the Sydney studio, Lowry has worked across ‘the living sector’ encompassing build-to-rent, build-to-sell, student accommodation, retirement living, and aged care projects.

What projects impress Lowry?

When asked for his top pick among last year’s lineup of IDEA-winning projects, Lowry says he has a “number of favourites”.

Lowry particularly admires the way the “rigorous and beautifully articulated” structure of the IDEA 2024 Institutional category winner defines spaces and curates activity, promoting incidental interactions or opportunities for withdrawal. This kind of “striking resolution” is more important to him in a project than a sense of originality.

“I don’t believe that there’s truly an original idea,” Lowry tells Australian Design Review. “As a profession and a practice, all of our works have roots in the cultural and historic context of our environments, whether local or international.”

For him, a creative, disciplined and educated mind finds opportunities and uses them to create something that “feels unique in its own way”. When evaluating the entries to IDEA 2025, he will be looking out for projects that realise those opportunities afforded by their original briefs. 

“The thoroughness of consideration of the proposition,” he clarifies, laughing at how pretentious that sounds.

Aesthetically, Lowry enjoys minimalist interiors that do not sacrifice warmth, particularly in the single residential sector.

“In houses, minimalism isn’t something that means cold white walls; it means highly considered spatial arrangements, openings to light and openings to view lines, sites and gardens, et cetera,” he says.

One trend he is not a fan of is “layering for the sake of layering”.

“I think design – like any great creative process – requires very strong editing to realise a very considered result,” he says. The same principles he enjoys in spatial arrangements also apply to material selections. 

“It’s really good to layer up material selections to see what’s possible, but then when you apply them to a space to edit them back to highlight what it is that you really want to have embraced, to subdue what it is that you don’t want to be taken into consideration that much, and to imbue simplicity and comfort and warmth in the space,” he says.

Enter IDEA 2025

Entries to IDEA are now open! Submit yours before Sunday 27 April to take advantage of the early bird discount.

IDEA 2025 is brought to you by Overall Sponsor Miele, alongside category sponsors Crafted Hardwoods, Cult, Designer Rugs, ForestOne, MillerKnoll, Neolith, Laufen and Zenith.

Headshot supplied by Rothelowman.