YASMINE GHONIEM
Director

Born to an Egyptian father and Australian mother, Yasmine’s projects are birthed from a nomadic childhood that provided the wellspring for her visionary flair given her formative years were spent living between Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Sydney. Lauded for her instinctual approach to design and adventurous palette-plays, Yasmine ironically almost missed her calling given her professional background abroad in dance and music. Despite completing interior design studies in America, intrepid instinct brought her to Sydney to pursue a career in music in her twenties. Leaving ample live gig mileage behind her, in 2013 she co-founded the internationally recognised and multi award-winning Sydney-based studio, Amber Road, with landscape architect Katy Svalbe. Not surprisingly, staging and storytelling elements were key informants of her visionary MO given the atmospheric potency of all her projects, and remain so to this day. In the span of just six years, it won and/or was shortlisted for over 40 design accolades, bolstering its reputation as one of Australia’s most directional and respected design studios.

Fuelled by her eagerness to consolidate her design strengths and offer new architectural builds and renovations, Yasmine established YSG (Yasmine Saleh Ghoniem) in 2020 as a multi-disciplinary initiative combining Architecture, Interiors and Curation for a holistic design experience. Since launching, YSG has received numerous awards including Designer of the Year at the 2021 Interior Design Excellence Awards, Best Residential Design, Best Residential Decoration and Best of NSW state at the 2020 Australian Interior Design Awards. In 2024, Yasmine featured in Architectural Digest’s definitive AD100 list in both Germany and the Middle East. She first received this Architectural Digest accolade during 2022, featuring in the European AD100 that recognises the most influential interior designers, architects and designers world-wide.

TOM SWANSON
Director

Despite his preference for a wetsuit over tailored attire, Tom plays the role of key contract negotiator, budget balancer, project ‘mover’ and all-round office manager with utmost tenacity. A lifelong surfer from the rural seaside town of Penzance, Cornwall, with grandparents, parents, uncles, and aunties all being potters, Tom’s love for natural stone and ceramics was inevitable. From a young age he was drawn to organic materials and his hometown’s mining history which led to geological studies.

For 20 years he traversed the globe in consultancy rules combining the fields of geology and civil infrastructure. Work took him from the shores of Africa’s south coast undertaking marine surveys in an overcrowded tugboat to keeping the brumbies company in the Australian alps as lead field geologist for the Snowy Hydro 2.0 project, plus living in local villages mapping the upper mountains of Vitu Levu, Fiji. A career change beckoned on the cusp of 2021 when Tom jumped ship to work at YSG. Now permanently based in Sydney, the pirate in him had hoped for additional downtime to hit the waves, but his vested interest in the business keeps his focus firmly ashore from nine to five.

FERNANDA PREVIATO
Architectural Associate

As YSG’s in-house registered architect, Fernanda’s investigative and pragmatic approach to creating built environments reflects her unique sense of rational playfulness. Her plans are tethered to a highly coherent aesthetic that above all else considers the emotive potency of interior design during concept stage to ensure the two are mutually aligned at the completion of every build.

Throughout her career, Fernanda has worked with leading architects and designers on projects straddling Rio de Janeiro, Dubai, Beijing and Sydney, where she was based at HASSELL in a senior architect role for 11 years. Spanning almost 20 years of design experience, her diverse range of project sectors include: heritage plus adaptive re-use, civic, residential (both small and large-scale mixed use), commercial and retail – equipping Fernanda with extensive master planning, tender processing and site management expertise.

TINA FOX
Associate

Tina was the student designing inflatable buildings and knitting models in pink wool while completing her Diploma of Architecture in the early 2000’s while her peers honed their skills working with concrete and plywood. For her, less is a bore, not more! Post studies, she drifted into interior architecture and design, starting with casino fit-outs embellished with Mardi-Gras sparks of va-va-voom. Next came transformations of heritage buildings into live performance venues with Alice in Wonderland-like decadence, enabling her to hone her refreshingly off-beat eye for visual compositions. Additional project experience ranging from prison and war memorial design to retail, hotel and luxe multi-residential projects across the UK, New Zealand and Australia has enabled Tina to master the art of managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders through to developing strategic sustainability plans. To add more, she’s also an accomplished artist who works with textiles, crochet and digital animation. Super her capabilities may be, she’s the first to admit that her parents’ Polish heritage is her kryptonite. Lure a good pierogi or barszcz before her and deadlines are instantly dropped for a seat at the dining table.

DIMITY NOBLE
Marketing and PR Manager

Having worked in the communications arena for over 10 years as both a writer for Wallpaper* magazine (a global authority on all facets of design) and as a strategic marketing consultant, content writer and publicist for individual clients, Dimity is our resident wordsmith, project pitcher and branding expert, connecting YSG to the world on a global axis.

She honed her critical eye whilst completing a Masters degree at the Courtauld Institute, London. Loathe to part with her Saturday night clubbing sessions in the infamous mid-nineties, she crossed the Atlantic to work a winter gallery internship in New York. Falling deeply under the city’s spell, she arrived back in Oz some five years later to manage exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, after working within the blue chip commercial gallery sector in Manhattan.

MICHELLE WICKS
Studio Manager

As our all-round strategist and organiser, Michelle’s extensive experience in the design furniture sector enables the YSG rocket to blast off into new endeavours on smooth flight paths. After completing an Associate Diploma in Applied Science (Architectural Drafting) and an Advanced Diploma in Interior Design, she immersed herself in the interiors world, operating senior sales roles for Cult, Vitra and District, amongst others. Her strengths manifest in doing things her way. Growing up on the central coast, she preferred to stick her nose in a book rather than out in the sun. When the surf was up, she headed inland instead to water ski on the local waterways. And despite working for a practice renowned for unleashing colour, she favours a sartorial palette of black. Cooking is Michelle’s key recreational pursuit. We regularly reap the benefits of her culinary talents, though we’re beginning to see a pattern of sweet offerings arriving in the studio on the days her number crunching skills tweak our creative budgets (but always necessarily so)!