Studio Minosa

Kbdi Awards 2026 Entrants

Awards Category: Kitchens Plus NSW, Master Suites NSW, Design Spaces – Residential

Luxury used to mean the biggest slab of stone. The rarest finish. The longest specification list. For Studio Minosa founders Simona Castagna and Darren Genner, luxury now means something harder to buy off a shelf — a home designed around exactly how you live.

“The brief should get personal. We should be asking the hard questions,” says Castagna. “If we’re going to change the way someone lives in their home, we need to understand far more than what colours they like.

”It is an approach Castagna and Genner have shaped over almost 25 years designing award-winning kitchens, bathrooms and complete homes. This year alone they are nominated for three awards at the annual KBDi Gala: NSW Kitchens Plus, NSW Master Suite and Design Space (Residential), with the pair’s finesse and desire for excellence obvious across all three projects.

Evident in all their work, real luxury does not begin with a material. It begins with a conversation. Not Pinterest. Not trends. And rarely the latest stone to arrive in a showroom. “Clients often come to us with a room they want to Change,” says Genner. “But there’s usually a reason behind it. Something isn’t working. Our job is to understand what that really is.”

Sometimes the problem is obvious. A kitchen no longer works for a growing family. Storage cannot keep up. A bathroom no longer suits the people using it. Other times, it sits deeper. Mornings feel chaotic. A couple rarely finds a quiet moment. The family no longer gathers in the way it once did. A bigger island. A double shower. A butler’s pantry. These may be things a client wants, but a wish list is not necessarily a brief.

“We listen for the things that aren’t written down,” says Castagna. “People tell you a lot about how they live if you give them the space to talk.”

Two clients might ask for almost the same kitchen, with similar budgets and finishes, yet the resulting spaces should be entirely different. One home revolves around the morning rush. Another comes alive on weekends with friends. For someone else, 10 quiet minutes with a coffee before the house wakes might be one of the most valued moments of the day. The room may be called a kitchen; the life happening inside of it is entirely personal.

“Sometimes a client mentions something almost in passing and it becomes incredibly important,” says Genner. “Our job is to hear it.”

As Studio Minosa’s work has evolved into complete residential interiors, the conversation has increasingly moved beyond individual rooms to how a home actually feels to live in. Not wellness as a trend. Something quieter. How morning light enters a bedroom. The transition between arriving through the front door and actually feeling home. Whether a bathroom gives someone 10 uninterrupted minutes before the day begins, or at the end of it.

“Your home has an enormous impact on how you feel,” says Castagna. “Sometimes people live with a frustration for so long they stop recognising it as a problem. They simply think that’s what home feels like.”

The answer is not necessarily more. “More isn’t automatically better,” says Genner. “The real question is whether the space is working hard enough for the people living in it.”

That is where a kitchen becomes more than a place to prepare food and becomes somewhere a family reconnects. A bathroom moves beyond utility and becomes part of a daily ritual. Storage disappears into the architecture because it has been considered from the beginning rather than added at the end.

The result may look effortless. The thinking behind it rarely is. Beautiful homes, meanwhile, have never been easier to find. Thousands of perfectly styled interiors can be saved to a smart phone in an afternoon. But being inspired by a space and knowing it is right for your life are two very different things.

“You can love an image and still not want to live in that home,” says Castagna. A home should have identity. Materials should have purpose. Craftsmanship matters. Ultimately, a home has a job to do: support the people living in it on an ordinary Monday morning as much as a Saturday night with friends.

For Castagna and Genner, perhaps the most useful question before beginning a renovation is not what style do I like? It is far more personal: what isn’t working about the way we live now?

That is where good design begins, and perhaps where luxury actually lives today. Not in the size of the slab or the rarity of the finish, but in the knowledge that someone thought about you specifically before choosing either.

The outcome is more than a beautiful home. It can design life better. Studio Minosa has been designing award-winning kitchens, bathrooms and residential interiors since October 2001 — that’s almost 25 years shaping how people live in their homes.