Preserving Memory – Mama by Kate Lawrence Interiors

Focusing on the natural and a texturally warm approach, Mama continues the functional calm of the original home, emerging as a considered evolution of its past. Kate Lawrence Interiors pays homage to her own past by reimagining the family home together with her mother, embedding further stratum of memory in the process.

Located south-west of Sydney in Menai, Mama is an inspired and deeply personal connected story between family members. As a reimagining of their shared family home, the interior reworking brings in a welcomed lightness, opening up and connecting the various spaces. Using a neutral and texturally diverse palette throughout, the spaces become bound by their tonality and a shared engagement with natural light. Key to the new work was to enhance an internal sense of scale and volume while also opening generously to the surrounds and the encasing natural landscape, bringing this aspect in as much as possible. Using careful restraint, Kate Lawrence Interiors is able to weave meaning into the considered rigour of the resulting home.

Using a neutral and texturally diverse palette throughout, the spaces become bound by their tonality and a shared engagement with natural light.

Although it is common for designers to have a shared history with their clients, it is a little less common for them to be related. In the case of Mama, Kate Lawrence Interiors worked closely with her own mother, who at the time had just been diagnosed with a significant illness and was preparing for her recovery process. The project then became a welcomed distraction and created an outlet for her energy to be funnelled through as she prepared with hope for the coming chapters. Each family home has its own inlaid memories forged over the years and retaining these, as well as making way for new ones, was key to the proposal.

Our homes become both reflections of us as people, a space to share with others and a place to be reclusively disconnected as well. They are uniquely personal spaces; an opportunity to reflect personalities and to share with those we welcome into our homes. At its heart, Mama is a retreat and a place to recharge from the surrounding world. Underlying the home is a sense of warmth and calm – ensuring each gesture responded to this intention formed the basis of the brief. Using a restrained palette and selecting elements from similar tones of the same colours allows each of the open and connected spaces to share a commonality, emphasising its scale.

Underlying the home is a sense of warmth and calm – ensuring each gesture responded to this intention formed the basis of the brief.

Embodied through a shared warmth and an engaging array of natural finishes, Mama by Kate Lawrence Interiors is sculpted as a contemporary and fresh iteration of its past self.