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Toast good design P H OTO G R A P H Y BY A N N A B R I G GS
Prak Sritharan’s Mt Vic flat is a refuge from the bustle of city life. Mia Gaudin spent a cosy morning with him.
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t’s just before eight on the first Monday morning after the end of daylight saving. I walk through the Mt Victoria street to the cottage that Prak Sritharan rents with his two flatmates, Jarred and Janelle. The streets are bustling with activity – a woman holding a keep-cup slips past me, two little girls kiss their dad goodbye from their front door, a big yellow bus noisily rounds the corner. Prak’s flat is nondescript from the outside, but when the door opens and I follow him in, the commuter buzz is forgotten and we’re in a world of good design, balanced colour, and the soft whirr of a heat pump. ‘We called this the chapel for a little bit,’ Prak says, pointing up. The cottage’s original ceiling has been removed, opening the space up and exposing the roofline of the building as in a church. ‘You’d never do renovations like this, in this day and age, it would just cost so much, look at that joinery work up there!’ he says. It does look remarkable, and although it adds volume, the honeyed wood creates a sense of warmth. Prak is still eating a piece of toast and Radio New Zealand is playing from his phone. He’s got a new morning ritual – well, new since opening his carefully curated design store, Precinct 35, four years ago. ‘I’ll get up around quarter to seven, go for a run if the weather’s nice, make my toast, which probably doesn’t even leave the…’ Prak signals around the kitchen where he’s making me a cup of tea. ‘The toast gets eaten straight off the board.’ He brings the freshly brewed pot over to the table where his computer and two journals are sitting. This is all part of
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