There is a shift influencing how layouts, amenity and spatial planning are being approached across developments in South East Queensland, according to a leading expert.
Design practice Plus Studio is seeing a move away from standardised luxury apartments towards highly personalised homes – where layouts, amenity and spatial planning are increasingly driven by how individuals live and use their space.
From wellness-focused zones to multi-generational living and spaces designed around entertaining and privacy, “luxury” is being redefined through the lived experience of clients rather than general specification.
Plus Studio director Danny Juric is at the forefront of this shift, leading a team delivering projects – predominantly residential – worth an estimated $9bn across Queensland.
With more than 30 years of experience across the Gold Coast and Brisbane, he is seeing briefs evolve in real time – away from market convention towards individual lifestyle needs.
“The penthouse at Faro in Broadbeach sold for more than $30,000 per square metre,” Mr Juric said.
Faro in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast has ocean views.
“It set a new record for non-beachfront apartments on the Gold Coast. But the number is almost beside the point.
“The buyer, an international figure in the technology industry, did not come to us with a wish list of finishes. They came with a life. A way of moving through their day. A set of values and rituals they wanted embedded in the architecture.
“We designed three levels around that life: 360-degree views framed with intention, a sculptural spiral staircase as the building’s centrepiece, a private rooftop pool positioned for the moments that mattered to this particular person.
“None of it was specified off a list. It was designed from scratch, for one person, by us. That is what luxury looks like now. Not a price point. Not a prestige address. A home that could only ever have been made for one person.”
Mr Juric said in work across luxury residential, from penthouses on the Gold Coast to bespoke homes along Queensland’s coast, the nature of the brief had evolved in real time.
Faro in Broadbeach rises 21 levels.
“Where clients once arrived with reference images and material selections, they now arrive with questions about how a home will function around their life,” he said.
“What time do they wake? Do they cook, or host? Is the pool for exercise or evenings with friends? These are not small talk. They are the brief.
“The answers shape everything: where light lands, how the plan flows from private to social space, which rooms earn the best outlook.
“Interiors follow the same logic, not a single palette applied across the whole, but a spatial and material language that responds to how each room is actually used.
“We have designed homes organised around a wellness courtyard: sauna, plunge pools, gym, and recovery spaces at the centre, with the rest of the house radiating outward. The owner is an athlete. Recovery is not an amenity. It is the logic of the building.
“What we notice, across this kind of work, is that clients are increasingly reaching for something that goes beyond aesthetics. They want environments that actively support how they feel, with spaces that work with natural light, airflow, material warmth, and greenery – not as decorative choices but as functional ones.
“The brief is often intuitive rather than articulated. They know they want to feel a certain way in their home.
“Our job is to translate that into architecture and interiors that deliver it.
“That home could not exist for anyone else in quite the same way. That is entirely the point.”
Mr Juric said there was a reason this shift was particularly visible in Queensland.
“The climate demands specificity,” he said.
“Subtropical heat, humidity, and coastal rhythms mean a home cannot be a generic product placed on to a site. Every shading device, every operable wall, every indoor-outdoor threshold must be calibrated to that particular piece of land, for that particular way of living.
Faro in Broadbeach includes open-plan designs.
“At Faro in Broadbeach, the record-setting penthouse brief was never about price. It was about creating something unrepeatable: panoramic views, generous outdoor living, interiors refined around one owner’s specific life.”
Mr Juric said a project on the Gold Coast began as a build-to-sell brief across four beachfront levels and became a private family compound: four residences, each calibrated to a different life.
“The parents occupy a three-level penthouse with a 25m rooftop lap pool,” he said.
“Their adult children each have their own apartment below, finished to the same standard but planned entirely around how each of them actually lives. Four homes. One building. Proximity without compromise.
“Every project is a prototype, made once, never repeated. The process asks more of everyone: more listening, more iteration, more genuine collaboration with the person whose life we are designing for. The outcome is a home that could only ever have been yours. In 2026, that is what luxury actually means.”
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