INSIDE 2021

INSIDE: Narrative & Discourse

by Marc Almagro
Photography by Chino Sardea and Tracey Nguyen
07 Dec 2021

In this stunning apartment, the rooms tell amazing tales

“I would describe my style as ‘storytelling’,” says artist and designer Stefanie Hauger. “I choose furniture, objects, finishes, and materials that speak to one another, that give each other a narrative and that don’t compete with one another for attention.” Hauger likes to draw from different eras, provenances, different languages, cultures and artisans, as long as there is a common thread in the visual language—"preferably as simple as possible, without being minimalist or overly understated”. The quest is for glamor over glitz, elegance but not necessarily luxury. “The most modest and humble object can have the loudest voice – I like creating those sorts of dynamics.”

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As a designer, Hauger enjoys taking a client’s collections of objects and elevating them to unexplored heights and finding connections from one thing to another. “Basically,  taking the various stories of their lives and weaving them together. And always keeping it light-hearted and full of cheeky humour.”

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Hauger doesn’t use the word eclectic too loosely or too often, but admits that there are “definitely very eclectic elements to the way I design so that the client’s personality and life is celebrated rather than brushed over and white-washed by a particular ‘style’ that may be fashionable or specific to a designer”. Ultimately, she concedes, it’s the client’s home, which should be honored and respected above and beyond the designer’s own ego. “That said, I can also be brutally honest and edit where I feel this is necessary to create harmony, and reduce chatter that is too loud within the home.”

In her own home, Hauger creates a symbiotic celebration of the past and the present. “I adore living with the pieces I have inherited, and which remind me of my ancestors and loved ones that have passed on. I feel their presence in the energies that the pieces which once belonged to them still hold within.

“I believe that the past and present should draw energy from one another and, needless to say, they are all pieces of my personal rhetoric and history.”