It won’t be easy stepping into Kathleen Kusinski and Melanie Marshall’s shoes, but MKDC Design Consultants' new directors are more than equipped to take on the task.

The Perth interior design firm is undergoing a change in leadership, as Ms Kusinski and Ms Marshall step into retirement 34 years after founding the business.

Interior designers Jacqui Williams and Alexis Kusinski have become directors and major shareholders in the business, while registered architect Daniel Urban has taken on a minor stake and stepped into an associate director role.

Established as Marshall Kusinski Design Consultants in 1992, MKDC has grown to become the largest interior design firm in Perth.

It competes against major architecture outfits such as Woods Bagot and Hames Sharley and has a strong presence in the commercial interior space.

Projects on its books include the 12,000 square metre fit-out for Inpex in BGRE’s (formerly Brookfield Properties) Nine The Esplanade at Elizabeth Quay.

The firm has designed commercial fit-outs for Woodside, the ASX, Alcoa, RSM, Azure Capital and Osaka Gas.

MKDC has also worked extensively for the state government and non-profits, including St Bart’s and Uniting WA.

In the aged care space, the firm has designed multiple fit-outs for industry stalwarts MercyCare and Brightwater.

Its hospitality projects include the $21 million Walcliffe House project in Margaret River for iron ore heiress Alexandra Burt and her husband Julian.

MKDC is the local design lead for that prestigious project, working closely with architects MJA Studio.

Leadership

The firm’s new owners have a breadth of experience in the design space, having been with MKDC for a combined 32 years.

Ms Williams joined in 2014, 16 years into her career, to provide some leadership while MKDC’s founders were away.

“When I came on it was really just to look after the office for five weeks while Kath and Mel were on leave,” Ms Williams told Business News.

“I never left.

“We started to work together and they gave me some really hard clients to deal with. And they opened up aged care, which really interested me.

“I really enjoyed developing a whole portfolio with Kath.”

As Kathleen Kusinski’s daughter, Alexis Kusinski grew up in an environment where good design was prioritised.

Alexis was a toddler when her mother and Ms Marshall established MKDC, initially operating from the Kusinski family’s loungeroom in Nedlands.

Growing up, Alexis said she was not necessarily encouraged to study interior design. However, exposure to the business piqued her interest.

“I used to come in and do their filing on school holidays, but mum never encouraged me to do design,” Alexis said.

“I did a year at [The University of Western Australia] doing an arts degree, and then I decided to change to interior architecture, and she was like, ‘Really? why? are you sure?’

“I think she was always really conscious of not wanting to influence my decision on what I wanted to do.”

Daniel Urban came into the business in 2020 and is MKDC’s only registered architect.

A career in design was his ambition from a young age.

“Being an architect and being in design is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do for as long as I can remember,” Mr Urban told Business News.

“When I was a kid, about 10, I was drawing, I was copying plans in the newspaper’s house liftout; they had little floor plans and I would draw them.”

Ms Williams said Mr Urban’s appointment aligned with the firm’s evolution as its remit expanded.

“Dan’s strength in terms of what he’s brought to the practice is because we’re primarily an interior architecture firm, and we’ve been building that way,” she said.

“We sit very comfortably in refurbishment as well … [which] … often leads to a need to extend buildings and develop and upgrade facades.

“You come into a bit of a grey area of interior architecture suddenly needing to become more about considering the envelope as well.

“That’s been something that’s really developed well and has led to us being able to really wrap around the interiors, which has been really valuable.”

MKDC designed Alcoa’s offices when the company moved from Booragoon to Perth CBD in 2025. Photo: DMax Photography

Focus

While primarily a commercial interior design company, MKDC has broadened its scope over the years.

Its pivot into aged care came after the GFC, when the founders recognised a need to diversify.

Leading up to that period, Kathleen Kusinski said, resources companies were MKDC’s bread and butter.

“We’ve never wavered from commercial … and until the GFC, our main focus was on purely commercial,” she said.

“At the time of the GFC, every single one of our clients was in the resource sector, and that was a very bad time because a lot of projects went on hold.

“It was at that time that we really pivoted to also develop other avenues; we made a huge push into aged care.”

MKDC also expanded its presence in the government sector during this period.

In 2015, the Barnett government progressed its plan to move the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation to a new office building in Joondalup.

MKDC took on the interior design for that project, which marked the firm’s largest job at the time.

“That was a really pivotal time for us, because we what we learned from the GFC is you needed to have a spread of work to survive,” Kathleen Kusinski said.

Office culture

Shifts in the way workplaces operate have translated to significant changes in commercial fit-outs for the firm since the early 2000s.

Among these, Kathleen Kusinski explained, was a greater importance on creating a positive culture for employees in the workplace.

“We’ve really gone through that whole evolution,” she said.

“When we started, just about every manager would have been in an office, every second secretary probably was in an office.

“So Mel and I continuously kept up to date with changes in design and the importance of interior design.

“You weren’t just designing an office; you were designing for change, you were designing for workplace culture.

“In the early 2000s, we were introducing things like the change from the staff room to all of a sudden being a staff hub and a hub for people to collaborate. Staff retention and working conditions became much more important.”

As workplaces evolved, so did the space required for each worker.

“People have gone from having their own office – at 18 to 20 square metres per person – to now [where] commercial offices [are] between eight and 10 square metres per person,” Kathleen Kudinski said.

“That saving in area is very significant.”

To excel in interior design, Ms Marshall said it was important to understand the intricacies of how a particular business operated.

“To do the best job we can, you have to understand a lot about how business or operation … works to give them the best solution,” she said.

“That was always super interesting for us because you really get in the nitty gritty of understanding how organisations work.

“It’s a huge tool for them to run their business, so that was consistently interesting that people trust us with highly confidential, often corporate knowledge, particularly about growth or reduction in teams and that sort of thing, for us to give them the best solution.”

Alexis Kusinski said more businesses were asking for strategyfocused design.

“We are finding a lot more demand for workplace strategy work and feasibility work, so working with clients … to help them ascertain how much space they really need,” she said.

“Everyone has some kind of work-from-home policy now, and it’s not always consistent across even different departments within an organisation.”

Alexis Kudinski said that utilisation of spaces in workplaces was a key consideration in interior design.

“It means we would go into their fit-out and work out how many people are actually sitting at their desks,” she said.

“[We would] them analyse that to say, ‘Okay, well you guys are asking for more desks, but actually you’re at [a certain level of] occupancy.’”

Kathleen Kusinski (seated, left) and Melanie Marshall established Melanie Marshall Design Consultants in 1992 and always planned to retire at the same time (right). Photo: (right) DMax Photography 

Evolution

MKDC has adapted to changes in technology as the firm has grown, with its founders recounting a shift from pneumatic drawing boards to computers.

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) is coming into play, too.

For Ms Williams, setting some parameters around the use of AI was an early priority when she stepped into her new role.

“The first two things we’ve done [were] to have a values workshop with our team to work out our company values together … and we created an AI policy,” she said.

When it came to AI, Mr Urban said there was a need to tread carefully.

“It’s definitely a tool that can be used not so much in a design sense, but in a workflow sense,” he said.

“But then there would be people in the industry who, and I’ve seen it on Instagram … just use AI completely.

“I think there are extremes that I’m not really comfortable using, but there are aspects to AI that are very useful.”

Alexis Kusinski said open communication with clients was key when it came to the use of AI in design.

“[It’s about] being really transparent with it, and really transparent with the client,” she said.

“And also ascertaining what they’re comfortable with.

“I think there will be probably times in the future where we’ll go, ‘Actually, this is the project where we do kind of explore that a little bit more’. And then there’ll be projects where we go, ‘No, it’s not appropriate.’”

MKDC has grown to 17 staff today, and its new directors are focused on stability rather than growth for growth’s sake.

But with some major recent contracts under its belt, MKDC is likely to grow its personnel.