Travel Inspiration: Sydney – The Not-So-Guilty Pleasures of Shelter Magazines

We arrived in Sydney, Australia one day ago. An already very long trip, made even longer by a flight cancellation in San Francisco. (As a silver-lining, we had a very nice few hours as a family in a local hotel, and a great visit with my family in SF). Waking up this morning, we’ve been in Sydney just over 24 hours and the jet lag fog is gone. It’s a bit overcast from last night’s rain, but warm — it’s the first week of summer here.

Since I am on vacation, I get to treat myself to the pleasure of flipping through magazines — on the beach, deck, alone or hanging with friends and family. Many of these will loosely fall into the “shelter” magazine category — lifestyles, interiors, and architecture. There are two reasons I do not call this pleasure guilty. 1) It’s helpful for me as a designer to be inspired by others, and 2) it’s fun and not hurting anyone (especially if I share with others and pass along used magazines). Shelter magazines are increasingly supplemented and supplanted by online magazines, blogs and apps, but there’s still something great about having the pages in my hands, especially on a sticky, warm day.

I’ve fallen in-love with the lifestyle and interior styles in Sydney over my many visits. In a future post this visit, I’ll chat more about the Sydney-style represented in architecture and interior design. But today — our first full day in our holiday home — I get to plan my vacation reading. (In addition to shelter and lifestyle magazines, I have a stack of serious and less serious books to keep me busy — gotta love vacation!)

My connection to Sydney is through family and friends — not the design community — so my magazines are simply collected from the local shop. Much of the inspiration I will gather will be about the interplay of materials, furnishings, and architecture. I’ll mostly skim through and see what I find attractive. On a second look, I’ll study why an image is attractive. A fun quirk, for me, is that most of these homes would not make sense in the Northeast of the US where I live and work. Therefore, I get to sit back and view, take pleasure, and find inspiration — soak it all in without judgment. Here’s a brief prelude to the mags and articles I’m looking forward to this week.   

Part of my vacation to-do list