Women's Culture Jill

W O M E N ' S C U L T U R E 15 C aroline and Vince are the creative powerhouse couple behind Acme – a multi-disciplinary design firm that was awarded The Prodigy award in 2017 for the Inde.Awards – a design honour of the highest order. Celebrated for innovative, inspiring, and quite frankly, category- leading design work, particularly in the realm of hospitality, Acme is the boutique practice behind some of Sydney’s most recognisable venues. As is the case with most successful partnerships, Caroline and Vince started their design careers separately – pursuing and polishing their respective crafts before coming together at just the right time. “I was working as a registered architect and ran my own business for 11 years before meeting Caroline, while she actually started in fashion before working as an Interior Designer,” says Vince. “We started dating in 2011, but we didn’t start working together right away. We take the same approach to design, so when we collaborated on a project two years into our relationship, we saw the potential in merging our complementary skills. So, in 2013, Acme was born,” adds Caroline. This is a story Caroline and Vince are now used to telling, thanks to the growing interest in their success and partnership. These two are partners in life and work – and while a lot of people might see such an intermingling of worlds as a recipe for disaster, it works perfectly for Caroline and Vince. “Because we know each others strengths so well, it’s easy for us to see where there are big opportunities, which means we can really push the possibilities of our projects. We just know how to operate as a team,” says Caroline. At a base level, Acme is a design firm that dreams and draws up a broad range of spaces, large and small, in the hospitality, residential, and commercial sectors – to name a few. But it’s the way they approach this work that makes their designs so consistently interesting, showcasing and celebrating the true ethos of every site in a way that makes patrons feel like they’ve stepped into another world, every time. On their list of past projects, there are some very familiar names — The Grounds of Alexandria, Fred’s and the Archie Rose distillery. And even they, with their colossal popularity and wide-ranging crowds, tend to feel completely authentic and representative of the heritage of their sites. There’s no big secret behind this, say Caroline and Vince, other than unfaltering dedication to detail. Rather than focusing purely on aesthetics, their philosophy is to pay close attention to a site’s past in order to respectfully render its future. Never taking a one-size fits-all approach, they spend an unlimited number of hours looking for different ways to solve problems, experimenting with new ways of using materials and technology, and exploring the fundamentals of environment, sustainability, and space. This is the reason they were awarded Emerging Design Practise by The Design Institute of Australia in 2014, when Acme was only a year old. It’s why their projects have received accolades such as Interior Design Excellence, Best Bar and Restaurant Design and Best Café Design. And it’s why they continue to be recognised by their industry, with a recent nomination for the INDE Prodigy Award. “The nomination for the Prodigy Award really is a tremendous honour. Actually, it’s always an incredible feeling to be recognised by the industry you love,” says Vince. In addition to continuing to create memorable places and spaces in Australia, the Acme duo are ready to branch out to more distant shores and already have a few overseas projects in the pipeline. But no matter where on the map these new ventures lie, they’ll be bound by the same intention. “We want to keep evolving and creating places that bring people joy – that’s the core reason we do what we do.” a_c_m_e www.acme-co.com.au There’s no big secret behind this, say Caroline and Vince, other than UNFALTERING DEDICATION TO DETAIL.