ucked away in a pretty courtyard just off Queen Street, Woollahra, interior designer Michelle Macarounas’s studio is a stylish office space, adorned with the occasional intriguing piece of restored Scandivanian furniture, vintage drinks tray or Ross Gardam lamp. This weekend, however, a transformation is underway.

The space she moved into recently will submit to Missoni-makeover, as office morphs into a residential apartment through a trick of interior design — think plenty of dichroic film, a silvery reflective material that dances with light. Bedecked with the famous zigzag rainbow as well as floral and butterfly designs embraced by the Milanese fashion house for summer, the space will be showroom meets immersive art installation meets Missoni pop-up store. Think an Instagram “shoppable” post you can walk around.

Macarounas, who spent decades living overseas, has cemented her credentials as designer since moving to the eastern suburbs. Her work is favoured by influential, high-profile and tasteful local clients in the fields of arts, finance and business, and the Missoni installation signals a push into more ambitious, showstopping experiments in design and marketing.

Cupping a coffee in her studio, she explains she has been moved to think holistically about design after a succession of visits to Milan Design Week, when the global industry converges on the northern Italian fashion mecca to live, breathe, sleep, eat and party around all things design.

“You spend the week [in Milan] absolutely exhausted but absolutely inspired by the crazy things you see. I had felt for a long time we wanted to bring the same [spirit] to Australia.”

With the Missoni event she wants to put Queen Street back at the centre of the design map. “Funnily enough on Oxford Street, because the rent is so low, a lot of the design companies that went out to Alexandria are actually coming back in — the area is getting that creative vibe back. It would be beautiful to see Queen Street open up like that and really have a creative vibe again,” she says.

Having attended Missoni’s event in Milan, she has a reverence for the label. “Designers who have such a bold style, it’s difficult to continue that thread through for so long.

“I love the versatility, and that they have been around for so long and they continue to always come out with new things, but they still have the core of who they are,” Macarounas says.

Fiona Lyda, managing director of Spence & Lyda, Missoni’s distributors in Australia who have collaborated with Macarounas, says the collaboration is “unique”.

“Spence & Lyda and Missoni Home have never collaborated with a designer before. It will be fantastic to see what Michelle and Infinite Design have put together.

“It’s fabulous to see the many and varied ways the brand can work … It will be a unique experience for Missoni Home in Australia, one of deep immersion.”

Macarounas, 48, grew up on a farm in rural NSW. Her father worked as a butcher, as well as running the property. It was there, leafing through magazines her grandmother had sent over from London, that she first fell in love with design.

Aged 19, she moved to Europe where she spent the next 10 years living and studying between Switzerland and France.

“I loved being in Paris and learning about fabrics and textures, they have a very curated way of doing design. It’s very methodical. Which is great to have as a background, but to have the freshness and relaxed idea of Australia with that — that’s what I love,” she says.

Returning home to Australia in her 30s, Macarounas found that the design world could be “isolated”, and its image disconnected from the public. She became enamoured with the concept of social design, and sought to bring those principles to her projects, including opening up spaces in clients’ homes to improve interaction and flow and conversation.

With clients that include Sylvia and Sam Kaplan, MD of funds management company KPM; psychologist Francesca Harvey of SPC; Westpac executive and Board Member at MCA Michael Sirmai and his wife Rebecca Finkelstein who is a partner at King & Wood Mallesons law firm, Macarounas is interested in how design can contribute to a balanced and healthy life.

She reports that designers are moving away from technology, and the screen-obsessed habits of the iPhone generation, and back towards interiors that enable conversation and socialising.

She also has projects underway for Colin Porter, CEO of CreditorWatch; Gina and William Hara; Natalie and Nathan Parris, partner at Emerge Capital; and jeweller to the stars Stefano Canturi and his wife Patricia.

Trends she has brought back from overseas being embraced by clients include a return to more formal sitting rooms, where televisions are removed altogether or can be shut away in hidden cabinets, in favour of a quieter room for contemplation, whether that’s a library or hidden courtyard.

“Remember the L-shaped sofa at home and how it faces a TV?” she says. “How many people have that, come home, sit in front of the TV and probably have their food in front of the TV.

“For me it is really about moving away from that and moving back towards curved furniture where you’re almost forced into conversation.” Macarounas taps the chic glass circular table where we sit.

“Even round tables, I have a big one in my home now,” she says, referring to her ocean-facing Coogee house, which she shares with her Greek-Australian husband and twin children. “We had a big rectangle [table] before — you could almost be at a lunch and not interact with the person at the other end. And now we’re all talking about the same thing.”

A 1920s Tuscan villa in Bellevue Hill recently featured in Vogue Living for its blend of “luxury European aesthetic and casual Australian ease”. Think peachy-pink contemporary sofas, sleek bamboo wooden tables, and vast ornate mirrors.

Another home under construction on Lang Road near Centennial Park will display wall-to-ceiling book shelves, a fireplace and mid-century furniture, among features designed to create closeness amid vast proportions.

The studio’s imprimatur can be found on the water too. After her elegant Mosman Houseboat design garnered attention and acclaim on completion in February last year, she has taken on yacht commissions. In June this year, the studio completed the interior of Longreef 60 by Australian-owned company Longreef Yachts. She eschewed nautical themes for “a luxury Hermes style — lots of silver, greys and orange”, with a scheme that put the views and waves at the forefront. The yacht in question recently sold to Michael Heine, managing director of Netwealth Investment, for $2.5 million.

Increasingly, Macarounas is interested in giving a public face to the kind of luxury usually kept very private. Echoing the approach of cities like Geneva where the shopfronts of interior designers’ are mixed with restaurants and cafes, meaning they are part of the fabric of the neighbourhood, Infinite Design Studio now has a changing window display to provide a platform for eye-catching designers.

Macarounas and her team have fitted out windows in Danish brand Karakter Copenhagen and Australia’s Vampt Vintage Design.

This too, is where Missoni Loves Summer fits in. “Rather than doing cushions and blankets, how, as humans, do we take our living to the next stage?” Macarounas asks. “That’s what drives me to do design.”