A new financial year is a good excuse to stop and take stock. It's the one moment where you're forced to look up from the drawings and actually measure where the studio has landed. So here it is: six months of Studio Frino, the honest version.

I've been running this business for five years now, first as Darkside and now as Studio Frino. In that time we've become a residential architecture practice with our feet firmly in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, designing bespoke homes for the way people actually live. Watching the studio evolve toward that has been genuinely rewarding. Not in a straight line, not always comfortably, but the studio today is a sharper, better version of what I started. The last six months are a big part of why.

Ana Joined the Studio

The biggest change is that Ana Subotic is now in the office full time.

Ana comes with serious residential pedigree. She's worked at a number of Sydney's best-known residential practices, most notably Stafford Architecture, where she was a Senior Project Architect. That's not a small thing. Residential design done properly is hard, and the practices that do it well are few. Ana learned it at one of them.

She's been a pivotal addition. The work is stronger for having her judgement on it, and the studio runs better with two of us steering rather than one.

And yes, we're married. People love to ask how that works. I'll be honest: working alongside your wife is interesting. There are days it takes discipline to leave a design disagreement at the studio door. But we've made it work, and more than that, we've made it work well. We think differently enough to challenge each other and align closely enough to move fast. That combination is rare, and I don't take it for granted.

Two Projects Crossed the Line

Two significant residential projects reached completion this half, and both matter to us.

The first is our Eastlakes project, Between Old and New. We handled both the architecture and the interiors on that one, working closely with the client and our builder, Fergus Whitney Building. Styling by Haus of E. The end result is genuinely beautiful, the kind of project where the brief, the build and the finish all landed in the same place.

I won't try to describe every detail here. Some things are better seen than written about, and this is one of them. Head to our Instagram @studiofrino for the full set of images. It's worth the scroll.

Delivering architecture and interiors on the same project is where a home comes together as one idea rather than two.

The second is a home in Coogee, which we've just had photographed. We worked with Danielle Leigh Interiors on this one, and it's a good example of what happens when the client trusts the process. Ours let us genuinely lean into the design, and a project always ends up in a stronger place when the client gives you that room. The best homes in the Eastern Suburbs come out of that kind of relationship, not in spite of the client but because of them. We'll be sharing photos of the Coogee house soon, so keep an eye out.

The Rebrand Landed

When we moved from Darkside to Studio Frino, we knew the new identity was strong. What we didn't fully expect was how warmly it would be received.

The response to the new graphics has been fantastic. We've had a steady stream of messages and comments from people who connected with the look, the confidence of it, the personality. To everyone who reached out and sent us love for the rebrand: thank you. Branding is often treated as an afterthought in this profession, something you do reluctantly once the real work is done. We took the opposite view, and the reaction has confirmed we were right to.

What's Next

We're keen for the six months ahead, and there's plenty in front of us.

The one I'm most excited about is our own house in Bronte, the heritage cottage we call The Brae. We've written about it before, the tiny site, the undercroft, the terrarium light well. Now we get to be our own clients, which is equal parts liberating and terrifying. If we get it right, and I think we will, it should be a genuinely strong architectural outcome, and another Eastern Suburbs home we'll be proud to put our name to. We'll be documenting the whole thing as it comes to life.

Five years in, the studio has never felt more like itself. The team is right, the work is landing, and the identity finally matches the ambition. If you're planning a new home, an alteration or an addition in Sydney and you care about how you live in it, that's exactly the work we're here for. It's a good place to start a new year from.

More soon.

Studio Frino is a residential architecture practice based in Woolloomooloo, designing bespoke homes across Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, led by Andre Frino and Ana Subotic.