A design consultancy. Brisbane, then the world

Design that thinks before it draws.

Studio Hillenberg

A senior design consultancy for evidence based environments and the brands that live inside them. We work across healthcare, commercial, residential and cultural research. One studio, six crafts, four ways in. Branding, interiors, spatial design, photography, wayfinding and the finishing eye of someone who has been doing this a very long time. Commercial or residential. Brisbane, or a plane ride away. Same standard, either way.

Issue 01 · Featured project

Wired Orthodontics · Brisbane · Interior, brand, wayfinding

Wired Orthodontics treatment room, interior design by Studio Hillenberg

Plate 01 — Treatment room, cast in gold and forest greenPhotograph, Studio Hillenberg

The Studio

Studio
Hillenberg

A small, senior design practice with strong opinions and softer edges. Branding, photography, interiors and spatial design. From Brisbane, for the world.

Est. Brisbane, AU

Nina Hillenberg selecting tiles and material samples in the Studio Hillenberg materials library — Studio work · specifying finishes for a residential fit out

Most of the work happens here. Tiles on the table, a hundred samples, a very strong coffee, and a decision that will outlast us all.

What we do

How should this space make people feel?

Every Studio Hillenberg project begins with that question. The answer shapes everything after it, across four ways in and six crafts, from the first sketch to the final photograph.

01Pillar

Designing for Healing

What if the most important room in your practice isn't the treatment room, but the waiting room? Healthcare environments deserve more than compliance. They deserve design that lowers the pulse before the appointment begins, supports the people delivering care, and makes the whole experience feel considered. We design clinics, medical suites and wellness spaces where interior, brand and wayfinding are drawn as one.

Wired OrthodonticsBrisbane Pain SpecialistsVeterinaryMedical spa

02Pillar

Designing for Work

Have you ever left a workplace feeling lighter than when you arrived? Most people haven't. We design fit outs, flagships and hospitality spaces that help people think clearly, host generously and enjoy showing up, paired with identity systems built to survive the second location, and the third.

RetailStudiosVineyards, EuropeWine & spirits branding

03Pillar

Designing for Living

How should a home make you feel the moment the door closes behind you? Private residences, renovations and new builds designed around that one question. From a family estate in Ascot to a considered kitchen in Hawthorne. Spatial design, interiors, landscape and the finishing eye of someone who has done it many times before.

Ascot ResidenceUhlman ResidenceLandscapeFurniture styling

04Pillar

Designing for Discovery

Great design begins long before the first sketch. It begins with listening, with fieldwork, with the questions no one else thought to ask. Materials research, cultural study, evidence based briefs and the occasional award winning book. The part clients quietly mention at dinner.

Uncovering MoroccoMaterials researchBrand strategyEditorial

Crafts under every pillarBranding ·Interior Design ·Spatial Design ·Photography ·Wayfinding ·Furniture Styling

Why Studio Hillenberg

We are the studio you hire when the brief has to work harder than it looks.

Most studios do one thing well. We do six, on purpose, because a clinic that reads calmer, a home that photographs like the memory of it, and a brand that survives its second location are not separate problems. They are the same problem, viewed from different angles. That is the whole reason the studio exists.

One team

No handovers between the identity, the interior and the photograph. The people who drew it stay to specify it, style it and shoot it.

Evidence based

Materials research, cultural fieldwork and clinical thinking behind every brief. The pretty part is a by product of the thinking.

Senior only

You get the principal, not a graduate reading a checklist. Small studio, big decisions, no one to hand you off to.

Delivered

We finish. Documentation, joinery, signage, install, styling and the photograph. Then we hand you back the keys.

About the studio

I've always been fascinated by the way spaces influence behaviour.

Some invite conversation. Others encourage calm. Some quietly reduce anxiety before a single word is spoken. That curiosity became Studio Hillenberg.

Nina trained as an architect in Sweden, then across interiors and brand, then spent a decade specifying, styling and shooting projects from Brisbane to Marrakech. The studio's cultural research in Morocco became Uncovering Morocco: materials and finishes, which quietly picked up several international book awards while we were in the middle of a clinic fit out.

Today the studio works with orthodontists, pain specialists, vineyards in Europe, private residences in Ascot, Hawthorne and Noosa, and the occasional client who prefers we never mention their name. Same eye, same standard, same slightly obsessive attention to the details most people miss.

Perhaps great design isn't something we notice.
Perhaps it's something we feel.

A note on what you are about to see

A closer look, with permission.

How do you show work you are too busy making to photograph, for clients who often prefer discretion to a portfolio spread? Carefully. The studio is usually deep in it: wine branding with vineyards in Europe, residential work for clients in Noosa and Ascot, landscape design, and fitouts for veterinarians, orthodontists and medical spaces. Consider this a peek through the closet door. The rest is under embargo, behind scaffolding, or being lived in.

Project 01 · Commercial

Wired Orthodontics

A heritage cottage in Brisbane reimagined as a modern orthodontic practice. We designed the identity, the interior and the wayfinding as one continuous thing. The gold W monogram, the fluted joinery, the hand set tilework, the branded scrubs. It all reads Wired from the front gate to the last treatment room.

BrandingInteriorWayfindingPhotography

Fig. 01 — Waiting lounge, gold monogram bench

Wired Orthodontics reception — Fig. 02 — Reception

Wired Orthodontics treatment room basins with custom green tile and brass tapware — Fig. 03 — Treatment room basins

Wired Orthodontics entry foyer with brass chandelier, exposed brick and curved reception desk — Fig. 04 — Entry, the first thirty seconds

Wired Orthodontics treatment room one with tooth numbering, arched green niche and brass tapware — Fig. 05 — Chair one, softened clinical

Identity in place

Branding & wayfinding

The Wired mark was drawn to live at architectural scale. Cast in gold above the arch, pinned across a feature wall, dropped into signage, stitched onto the team. One identity, six ways of meeting it as you walk through the door.

Numbered tooth wayfinding above treatment bays one and two at Wired Orthodontics

Wired Orthodontics team beneath the illuminated monogram in the waiting lounge

Project 02 · Commercial

Brisbane Pain Specialists

A calm, considered clinic for a specialist medical practice. We designed the whole world of it. The identity, the interior, the wayfinding, the website, the social feeds. Warm timbers, soft daylight and a restrained material palette that reassures the patient before the consultation even begins.

BrandingInteriorSpatial designWayfindingWebsiteSocial

Visit the website Instagram LinkedIn

The clinic was redrawn around a single idea: arrive anxious, leave understood. Fluted stone, warm timber and a single circular monogram do the reassuring before anyone in a lanyard has to.

Identity in place

Branding & wayfinding

The Brisbane Pain Specialists identity was designed to be felt, not just seen. A gold foil mark pressed into welcome chocolates, an emblem inlaid into the timber floor, a stitched business card and a circular reception sign that anchors the whole room. Every detail answers the same brief: calm, confident care.

Stitched leather business card with the gold embossed Brisbane Pain Specialists emblem

Project 03 · Residential · Spatial design

Ascot Residence

Ascot, QLD · 2025

A private residence designed for Dr Sepher, with every square metre asked to earn its keep. Curved plasterwork, herringbone timber, a heated in ground pool, a whisky library and a cinema lounge on the double height void. Currently in build, and the kind of house that earns its drama and still keeps its manners.

Spatial designInteriorResidential

Ascot Residence front entry foyer with sculpted furniture

Ascot Residence floating stair and lift lobby

Ascot Residence kitchen with arched marble backsplash and timber ceiling

Ascot Residence kitchen island detail with fluted marble

Ascot Residence butlers pantry with dark cabinetry

Ascot Residence guest lounge with green velvet sofas

Ascot Residence bar and cabinetry with sunset window views

Wine cellar & entertaining

Ascot Residence wine cellar dining room with long timber table

Ascot Residence wine cellar bar detail overlooking stone dining

Ascot Residence wine cellar dining with climate controlled shelving

Office, cinema & retreats

Ascot Residence home office with pink marble desk and green ceiling

Ascot Residence study with timber shelving and pink marble desk

Ascot Residence cinema lounge with floor to ceiling windows

Ascot Residence master retreat and guest bedroom

Ascot Residence lounge and secondary living

Pool, sauna & outdoor

Ascot Residence rooftop pool with palm and timber sauna pod

Ascot Residence pool cabana and outdoor kitchen

Ascot Residence indoor heated pool with stone feature wall

Plans across three levels

Ascot Residence ground floor plan axonometric

Ascot Residence level one plan axonometric

Ascot Residence level two plan axonometric

Project 04 · Residential

Uhlman Residence

Hawthorne, QLD · Kitchen, laundry, bathrooms & exterior

A family home in Hawthorne reworked room by room. We designed a new shaker kitchen with a stone island and glass pendants, a considered laundry with a herringbone floor that runs the length of the house, and two new bathrooms. Outside, an exterior colour palette and landscaping brief that lets the garden do the talking.

KitchenLaundryBathroomsColour consultLandscaping

Uhlman Residence kitchen, laundry and living concept plan by Studio Hillenberg — Concept drawing

Fig. 02Before & After

Uhlman Residence dining and kitchen area before renovation, with dark cabinetry and terracotta tiled floor — Before. The bones were good. The mood, less so.

Uhlman Residence kitchen after renovation by Studio Hillenberg — After. Light, marble, and a proper reason to linger.

"Studio Hillenberg did a fantastic job with the overall design. We continue to receive compliments from patients and visitors about how beautiful the clinic looks and how impressive the branding is."

Dr Sami Ahmad

Brisbane Pain Specialists

In their words

"Studio Hillenberg did a fantastic job with the overall design. We continue to receive compliments from patients and visitors about how beautiful the clinic looks and how impressive the branding is. I think the design itself has been a real success."

Dr Sami Ahmad

Brisbane Pain Specialists

"Patients constantly comment on how beautiful, calming and welcoming the clinic feels, and that's a huge credit to you. Thank you for caring so much about our project. It was never "just another job" to you, and we always felt that."

Jo Dempster

Practice Manager, Brisbane Pain Specialists

Published work

What happens when you drag 32 design students across Morocco in search of the perfect zellige? You write a book. Obviously.

Uncovering Morocco: Materials and Finishes is the result. I co wrote it, I led the research, I entered it into two international book competitions, and it won both. A 192 page love letter to tadelakt, leather, metalwork, textiles and the artisans who still make them by hand. Published October 2020. Hardcover, ebook and posters available.

Winner

Next Generation Indie Book Awards

Winner

International Book Awards

Available at GOMA, Riverbend Books and Avid Reader, or online at studiohillenberg.com for the ebook and posters.

Hardcover A$79Ebook A$25Posters A$2020 x 20 cm · 192 pp

Uncovering Morocco book open to a spread of Chefchaouen photography

Framed Marrakesh hand of Fatima print alongside the Uncovering Morocco book

InDesign layout in progress for the Uncovering Morocco book, a nine image grid of Chefchaouen doors and streets

Uncovering Morocco book styled with a framed Marrakesh print

Indigo panelled doors and a man on a stool in a Moroccan medina, from the Uncovering Morocco research

Writing and press

Design, researched and published.

Book · Award winning

Uncovering Morocco: Materials and Finishes

A 192 page study of Moroccan materials, craft and artisanship. Winner of several international book awards. Available at GOMA, Riverbend Books and Avid Reader.

Book · Forthcoming

Uncovering Japan

The next book in the series: colour, material and light across Japan, with a photographic exhibition planned for Brisbane.

Essay · Forthcoming

The Conversation

“Scandinavian design isn’t beige. So why do we keep designing it that way?”

Furniture styling · a new service

Because a beautiful room, unfurnished, is just a very expensive echo.

A beautiful empty room is an unfinished sentence. All the right nouns, none of the verbs, nothing yet said aloud.

So we made it a service. Furniture styling, done the Studio Hillenberg way. We arrive with mood boards, measuring tapes, opinions and a slightly unreasonable devotion to proportion. We source the sofa you did not know existed, the vintage piece your grandmother would have fought us for, the lamp that quietly runs the room.

Whether it is one hero piece, a whole living room or a full home refit, we style it like it is going to be photographed. Because it usually is.

· Sourcing & procurement
· Custom joinery briefs
· Art & object curation
· Full room styling
· Photography styling
· Pre sale styling

Style a room with us →

From the sketchbook

Why do the smallest design decisions often have the biggest impact? Because they usually start here, on a slightly smudged page, long before anything is drawn to scale.

Every project begins with a pen. Plans scribbled at the kitchen table, joinery worked out in millimetres, a fireplace drawn twelve times before it feels right. These are ours. Rarely seen, always the real beginning.

Hand drawn architectural section of a residence set into a sloping landscape — Fig. 01 · Site section, private residence

Ink sketch of a large stone fireplace elevation — Fig. 02 · Fireplace study

Freehand sketch of a kitchen joinery elevation — Fig. 03 · Kitchen joinery

Hand drawn site plan for a pool house, pool and tennis court — Fig. 04 · Pool house and tennis court plan

Technical drawing of a three door Madeleine sideboard with front, side and top elevations — Fig. 05 · Madeleine sideboard, custom joinery

Fig. 06 · Clinic concept plan, annotated

The two of us

Every studio has a story. Ours goes like this: one designer who reads floor plans the way most people read novels, one collaborator who can make a website flirt with you. And a shared belief that good design should never feel like it's trying too hard.

Nina Hillenberg

Design & Interiors

Swedish trained architect and interior designer practicing since 1999, across Scandinavia and Australia. I also hold an Australian law degree, which shapes the studio's careful approach to briefs, contracts and intellectual property, and I lecture in design at Torrens University Australia.

Author of the award winning Uncovering Morocco: Materials and Finishes, and writing on Nordic design, democratic design and how the spaces we live in shape who we are.

I've never really believed in "just picking finishes." A room is a small argument about how someone wants to live. A brand is the same argument, held in your hand. My job is to make both of them beautiful, useful, and unmistakably yours.

Weakness: linen, ridiculous joinery details, and clients who say "surprise me."

Maria Tenggren-Dowling

Web & Brand

Not a designer by trade, a fact she'll cheerfully own, and yet she has a Scandinavian eye (scandalously good, we like to say) for what looks right on a screen. Maria came up through academics, playwork and the kind of tinkering that turns into real craft somewhere around year three.

She builds most of our websites, holds the studio's brand rollouts together, and asks the questions the rest of us are too polite to ask. Nina brings the pencil; Maria brings the internet brained conscience.

Weakness: a well kerned headline and a very strong flat white.

Two people. Small enough to care about the millimetres. Experienced enough to know which millimetres actually matter.

The Studio

We're a two-person studio that behaves like a much bigger one, and refuses to behave like a much bigger one. A handful of projects a year. Independent brands, full commercial fit-outs, private homes. Each one seen through from the first messy sketch to the final, quietly perfect photograph. No hand-offs. No juniors doing the interesting parts.

1999

practicing since

in the studio

disciplines

AU/INTL

clientele

Start a project

Perhaps the real question isn't what your space looks like.

It's how you want people to feel when they walk through the door. A new brand. A clinic that shouldn't look like one. A home that finally feels like you. Send us the half formed version. Let's begin that conversation.

Brisbane

Brisbane, Australia
Available internationally by appointment

International

By appointment
worldwide

studiohillenberg@gmail.com

Phone

0428 575 188

Design that thinks before it draws.

StudioHillenberg

How should this space make people feel?

Designing for Healing

Designing for Work

Designing for Living

Designing for Discovery

We are the studio you hire when the brief has to work harder than it looks.

I've always been fascinated by the way spaces influence behaviour.

A closer look, with permission.

Wired Orthodontics

Branding & wayfinding

Brisbane Pain Specialists

Branding & wayfinding

Ascot Residence

Uhlman Residence

Design, researched and published.

Uncovering Morocco: Materials and Finishes

Uncovering Japan

The Conversation

Because a beautiful room, unfurnished, is just a very expensive echo.

Nina Hillenberg

Maria Tenggren-Dowling

Perhaps the real question isn't what your space looks like.

Studio
Hillenberg