Inside the sweet success of 'Raspberry Jam', Canberra’s eclectic apartment transformation

Who: Designed by MYMYMY Architecture and NWE. Interior Design, construction by DXT Constructions.

What: Raspberry Jam, a maximalist apartment renovation completed in 2025.

Where: NewActon, ACT

When you open the door to an apartment, no matter the city, you usually know what you’ll find. White walls, coupled with a restrained palette of perhaps greys and blacks. Clean lines and minimalism.

Raspberry Jam is not that apartment.

Tucked inside a 2007 Fender Katsalidis-designed building in Canberra’s NewActon precinct, the 160-square-metre, three-bedroom, three-bathroom home has been reimagined as something unapologetically bold and unashamedly maximalist.

Designed for a creative family of three, the renovation was the result of a collaboration between Canberra-based studios MYMYMY Architecture and NWE. Interior Design, and started with a brief that refused to play it safe.

“They basically said, ‘we don’t want it to feel like any other apartment’,” says Mark Brook of MYMYMY Architecture.

“When they were looking to buy, they’d been through so many identical white boxes that were uninspiring. They wanted something that felt a bit different and more reflective of them.”

The apartment had strong bones and substance, from the high ceilings to the full-height pivot doors, the Venetian-rendered ceilings, and the generous proportions. So, the goal wasn’t demolition, but discernment.

“If you’ve got a good existing building, we don’t need to get rid of everything,” Brook says.

“The fundamental bones of [the apartment] have remained much the same. We’ve only completed selective edits to make it more appropriate for the family and the way they like to live.”

That philosophy of restraint within boldness defines the project. The renovation touched every room, but rarely through wholesale change. Instead, it focused on rethinking thresholds, upgrading surfaces, and inserting joinery where function and experience demanded it.

The most dramatic shift comes at the entry, with the original design landing you directly into the kitchen.

“The clients wanted to create a moment or a bit of an arrival sequence,” says Nina Exarhos of NWE. Interiors.

The solution was found in a richly coloured threshold wrapped in custom joinery with burl veneer and bronzed mirror, finished in a saturated raspberry hue that sets the tone immediately.

For the vibrant colour palette, the designers took their cues from the owners themselves – from the places they love to travel to, to key pieces in the clients’ wardrobes and their extensive art collection. India’s colour and intensity sit alongside New York’s urban edge and Singapore’s compact pragmatism, creating an interior that shifts in mood from one room to the next.

Spatial zoning was also key. With a teenage son in the household, distinction mattered.

“Apartment living can sometimes feel like you’re all living in each other’s pockets,” Brook says. “So, we felt that creating a distinct space between the parents’ zone and their son’s zone, and then a shared zone, was really important.”

Elsewhere, a former study became a green-tile-wrapped utility room. A third bedroom turned into a guest retreat and library.

In the main bedroom, a glazed wall to the en suite was given privacy by a curtain from Oat Studio, paired with matching wallpaper to create consistency throughout the space.

Materially, the project championed reuse. The original stone and timber veneer in the kitchen was restored rather than replaced, with new appliances and subtle extensions of bronze mirror and burl veneer to tie the old and new together. Wet areas were redecorated rather than rebuilt.

“This aesthetic isn’t for everyone, but it works because it suits the client,” Exarhos says.

“The fact that the apartment is quite big allowed us to be more playful. If it was a smaller space, it would be harder to bring all those elements in together.”

The resulting design is a masterclass in maximalism, and, as Brook says, a lesson in what apartment living can be when design resists the default of neutrality.

“There’s a whole range of people in society, and there is a massive spectrum on what apartments should and could be for every person,” he says. “They don’t all need to be identical.”