RICH WITH INSPIRATION

As an Interior Designer and an Architect, her first jobs with a Builder and then with Architects Skidmore Owings and Merrill gave her the technical background to seamlessly merge her interiors with the architectural framework. Combining her writing ability with her 3D training, she furthered her design skills as a Museum Exhibit Designer, which led to being head-hunted by international branding company, Landor of San Francisco, who encouraged her to design fashion, graphics and architecture in Branded Identities Interiors.

Toni saw her niche to create an identity approach to residential and hospitality interiors and Franchi Design achieved its first Melbourne commission in 2006. Toni’s company has evolved into a dedicated, obsessive design service in premium residential, retail and hospitality design.

Toni notes that Trends in her work rarely come from her own field of endeavor. Fashion, Jewelry, Green Technology, Historic Movies, and Science Fiction, and 3D imaging inspire the adventurous new directions visible in her work. She cherry picks design eras, as we might add a new ingredient to a dinner entrée, to add unique flavors to a new project: James Bond interiors, Hundertwasser’s colours, Warhol Graphics, and Lucite shapes of the 1960s; globe-trotting artifacts of the 1970s; pomp and exuberant embellishments of the 1980s.

Toni expects our upcoming interiors to emphasis layered geometries, higher contrasts, transparencies and more use metallic finishes in both the curved facades of buildings and phasing of interior spaces, designs that are only now possible with advanced computer modelling.