Onslow Gardens Apartment is a minimalist apartment located in Sydney, Australia, designed by Belqis Youssofzay and David Hart of Youssofzay Hart. The stained-glass bathroom door catches morning light, casting jeweled patterns across eucalyptus-toned tiles that seem to breathe with the apartment’s century-old rhythms. In this 84-square-meter Sydney dwelling, architect and client made a counterintuitive choice that speaks to our evolving relationship with domestic space: they subtracted a bedroom to create abundance.

This act of architectural restraint reveals something profound about contemporary design practice. Where renovation typically means addition – more rooms, more storage, more stuff – this project achieves luxury through elimination. The designers peeled away decades of accumulated interventions, walls and partitions that had gradually suffocated the apartment’s original Art Deco proportions. What emerged was not emptiness, but breathing room.

The D-Tiles system demonstrates how modular design can honor architectural heritage while serving contemporary needs. These smooth, curved components create a vanity that echoes the ceiling’s circular motifs, establishing visual continuity across nearly a century of design evolution. The tiles’ eucalyptus hue maintains conversation with that luminous stained-glass door, proving that dialogue between old and new need not rely on literal mimicry.

Material choices throughout reflect a sophisticated understanding of permanence versus fashion. The muted grey-blue kitchen cabinets and speckled Italian terrazzo deliberately reference the building’s original foyer, grounding the intervention in its architectural context. Yet the specially sanded stainless steel bench – softened from its industrial origins – speaks to how craftsmanship can humanize modern materials. These surfaces will age gracefully, accumulating the patina of daily use rather than the obsolescence of trend.

The joinery strategy particularly reveals the project’s intelligence. Thickened walls become storage solutions, resolving the fundamental tension between minimalism and function that plagues many contemporary interiors. This built-in approach recalls the integrated furniture of early modernist housing, where every surface earned its place through utility.