State of the Art; State of Kin

State of Kin is a Perth-based multi-disciplinary design studio offering comprehensive architectural, interior design, and construction services to create a vision for your space and make it a reality.

Specialising across residential, hospitality, retail, wellness and commercial sectors, the team approaches every project with unparalleled finesse, energy, and dedication.

They take the art and science of design and break it down into a process of staged phases based on the practical and measurable outcomes of a project.

Passionate about delivering expressive and contemporary spaces, each with a unique identity, the practice focuses on the experience of users within spaces, believing each project is formed from its own nucleus of insight and that design is a fundamental practice that influences and shapes human interaction, understanding, and behaviours.

This allows the team to shape spaces in a way that ensures function, movement, feel and look while maintaining the client’s vision and brief, as well as commercial viability.

A tight-knit team flowing with constantly evolving, dynamic ideas centred around innovation, momentum, excellence and revolution, the team at State of Kin is perpetually immersed in the realm of design with the collective purpose of creating inimitable architecture and interiors.

A family business and the amalgamation of new and old generations, State of Kin Design and State of Kin Construction offer a holistic service encompassing architecture, interiors, project management, construction and styling.

Following the success of their first project, “Brick House”, State of Kin reached new heights with the completion of “Shutter House”.

What began as a collaboration within the family, ended as an exciting project for the team to experiment with colour and materiality.

A celebration of vibrant colour, rich textures, light, and shadow, “Shutter House” is an exploration of tactility, a balance between powerful and gentle sensations and an experiential space throughout.

Strong, rectilinear forms and graphic geometric lines are softened and offset by strategically placed curves creating a balanced tension that is simultaneously stunning and exciting whilst feeling calm and balanced.

The three-storey façade features mechanical timber shutters, hence the project name, which lift open and closed as desired to reinforce a dynamic flow of air, light, energy and privacy throughout.

The spaces are abundant with light, and warmed by custom parquet timber floors, maintaining an ambience that is at once grand and comfortable.

Furniture, artwork, and lighting elements introduce forms and refinement with lively and playful finishes that further exaggerate the polychromatic, exuberant aesthetic of the home full of vivid hues and rich tones.

Against a backdrop that tends towards the natural and restrained, the tones of the furniture, paintings, lighting and sculpture at times contrast and at other times harmonise to create a series of moments within the broader scheme of the home.

The owner of “Shutter House”, Sharlene Lee, calls the team at State of Kin ‘unparalleled’, knowing from ‘the moment [she] stepped into the beautifully designed and built Shutter House that [she] had to make it [her] home’.

The State of Kin interiors and architecture team worked simultaneously on Shutter House and the focus on unique and hand-crafted finishes is evident throughout, along with the importance placed on craft and honesty of materials – a recurring theme with all State of Kin projects.

Service and quality are the only recurring themes. When it comes to design, the team rarely use a detail or material twice from one project to the next.

Each project has its own personality. Their designs are completely unique in that they are tailored to each client; their lifestyle and needs, the site and the local context.