In a Room is a conversation series where we ask our friends to share their favourite domestic spaces. For this edition we’re joined by Nic Dowse, founder of Honey Fingers.
Melbourne based apiarist and architect Nic Dowse's is the founder of the Honey Fingers collective. Honey Fingers loves 'bee cultures'. Bee culture is a term used to describe the special culture that exists between bees and humans. Promoting, exploring and experimenting with bee cultures – the intersection between bees and humanity; a celebration of our symbiosis – is what drives their research and practice.
Honey Fingers' creative and dynamic projects explore the intersections between farming, food, art, history, design and education; with the work always revolving around bees. Honey Fingers is eight seasons old and is continually growing, and transforming, to suit the directions new friends, new projects and new ideas take it.
Here Nic shares some of the simple pleasures to be found in his domestic life, from the comfort of the bedroom to the utility of the kitchen, and then into the great outdoors.
Nic Dowse, founder of Honey Fingers
Which room are you in today?
It’s 7 am, and this morning, like every morning, I’m sitting at my kitchen table in Ngár-go, Fitzroy, on Wurundjeri Country, Melbourne. It’s a long, communal table at counter height (90 cm, not the standard 73 cm). The house is an “artist’s house” with mixed use: retail, creative studios, and residential spaces spread over three floors (studio and commercial downstairs, residential upstairs).
My paper diary, laptop, and coffee sit in front of me, and my dog is sleeping across the threshold of the open door. It’s cool and humid: grey skies, a light mist, and wet concrete from dawn showers. I’ve been working for an hour—this is the room where I make my coffee, reply to messages, plan my day, and handle admin before heading to beekeeping.
Which room is the most active in your house?
This kitchen. It’s the space where we work, drink coffee, cook, share wine, eat, and meet. It’s also the thoroughfare to the front door, making it a site of incidental, communal crossings, where residents casually catch up and say hello.
Which room gets the least amount of use?
Probably my beekeeping workshop. I haven’t been in there much this off-season or spring season. It’s also not a communal space, so it doesn’t get the same kind of attention as the laundry, bathroom, or bedroom.
Which is your work-from-home room of choice?
Definitely the kitchen. It’s interesting because I have a small desk in my bedroom and a dedicated studio office with a full-sized desk (I work from home), but they tend to function more as charging stations and places to store paperwork and found objects!
I always find myself sitting here every day, working. I gravitate toward the kitchen in any house I’m living in or visiting—it’s where I do my routine: making coffee, replying to messages, writing poetry. The early morning hours, before the house wakes up, are quiet, productive, and calming..
Scenes from the home of Nic Dowse
What defines a great room?
Any room that generates an emotional response—a feeling—is a great room. Sometimes this is achieved through considered design (for example, great light), sometimes through material choices (calming natural materials like timber and neutral walls), and sometimes through amazing collections of furniture, objects, or art.
Rooms that demonstrate some kind of intention or consideration are my favourite. We live in these spaces, and it’s joyful to see rooms that occupants have really spent time arranging, curating, and designing..
What is your favourite type of room?
Although I’ve spent a lot of time writing about kitchens, bedrooms are my favourite space. We don’t fully appreciate how important sleep is for our bodies and minds, or how long each day we spend in our bedrooms. A calming, comfortable space designed for sleeping is the cornerstone of health and happiness.
What is your all time favourite room?
My favourite room is one where the earth is the floor, the sky is the ceiling, the forest is the walls, and the ocean is the window. Every summer, I spend long evenings on Gadubanud Country in the Otways, on the Great Ocean Road hinterland.
We sit on the side of a mountain during long sunsets and twilights, looking down over rolling hills to the Southern Ocean. (The next continent, over the blue horizon, is Antarctica.) We sit on colourful, cheap woven mats from the $2 shop on Smith Street, cook on the fire, and sometimes bathe in a claw-foot tub salvaged from a renovation.
We fill the bath with rainwater with a garden hose attached to a hot tap—no fancy plumbing or landscaping.
The natural world around us is humanity’s big room, and we should care for and appreciate it..