At Parkhill, a 2850-square-foot renovation in Melbourne, Australia, the curved openings that run through the home did not start as a decorative idea. Crissy Zhang Design developed each one to answer a specific problem left over from the existing shell, whose primary structure the studio chose to keep rather than strip out. Where a wall ran out of true, an arch absorbed the deviation instead of squaring it off. Where a retained structural element interrupted a sightline, a thickened threshold curved around it and let a view or a beam of light pass through instead.

Hardwick, the build partner on the project, carried the same logic from opening to opening, so that thickened walls, sculptural thresholds and integrated joinery read as one continuous move rather than a set of separate details. Rooms that were previously disconnected now share sightlines and daylight the original plan did not allow.

That same attention carries down to the scale of a single joint. Tile patterns in the kitchen and bathrooms were designed and individually cut, rather than laid from a standard sheet, so that proportion and alignment hold across every material transition. Custom joinery absorbs the storage and daily clutter that would otherwise interrupt the plaster and stone surfaces. The walls themselves are limewashed, a finish that builds soft depth into the plaster rather than sitting flat on top of it, giving the rooms a stone-like quality without the weight of actual stone.

Pale oak floors, laid in herringbone, and natural stone benchtops bring back the warmth the limewash leaves out. In the kitchen, a curved island in the same timber as the flooring anchors the room, its base carved into an arch that echoes the doorways elsewhere in the plan. A spiral stair with a blackened steel balustrade threads between floors, its oak treads matched to the joinery rather than set apart from it.

Furniture stays sparse rather than absent, each piece given room on a floor plate the arches and thickened walls have already simplified. A boucle sectional sits below a single small wall sculpture in the living room, with nothing else competing for attention in the frame. The tile behind the kitchen splashback runs in a warm brown running bond, the only surface in the apartment where pattern sits visibly on the material rather than folding into a curve or a joint.