Destination Living

architects in our market work. So we implement cost measures along the way so the clients and the architects and the design chain know the price. Whereas, traditionally when you undertake an architectural design, you end up designing and specifying everything first. And if you do cost it along the way, it’s usually not an accurate representation.” According to Costa, “What it comes back to is having the key person in the role that has an ownership stake. So having Alex Hill, our Architectural Director, on board with an ownership stake in the business is critical for our future plans. Grace, who runs the interior design, has an ownership stake. Every project we bring to market now speaks to what we are and what service we offer that nobody else can do. Because we’re bringing together an architect, a designer and a builder singularly on a project. We are an architectural practice but we have the building program infused and we educate our builders. We select the builder who will be physically doing the build – they’re our partners. They come in during the design phase and participate. They then bring all of their trades and suppliers into our architectural program half way through the process. We’re looking to recreate that element of 120 years ago where you have an artisan builder working hand in hand with an architect. We fully support our builders and we’ve never had a builder to date that didn’t want to continue working with us.” Destination Living operates in Melbourne and does some coastal work – their high-end homes seem to attract that clientele. But it’s a scalable model. Costa notes, “We could actually go in and set up an office immediately to provide an had a team on board that appreciated the art of designing a home, the results were amazing. From the beginning, the business mantra was to create and deliver a phenomenal product. And today, no matter what the project is, they still hold that yardstick up against it and ask, is what we’re doing producing the very best design? Co-founder, Grace Patane, explains, “It’s about having the most skilled people in a given area working to their strengths and providing support to wherever the weaknesses are and then shoring that up. With an architect, a weakness may be that they don’t know how to design to cost because that’s not the process by which