Wherever Nina Beale settles around the world, she makes it feel like home. The Australian hauls her beloved furniture with her like some would their most treasured keepsakes or most comfortable pair of jeans. Some of these pieces have followed her from Sydney, where she hails from and met her husband David, to London—where she worked as an investment banker, got married and had a daughter India—moved back to Sydney for a stint and then on to Singapore in 2009. In the current instalment of this transplanting trajectory, she gave birth to her second daughter Poppy, as well as a third offspring in the form of her furniture business, Bungalow 55. Located at Dempsey, the whitewashed, light-blessed showroom, adorned with framed watercolour botanicals, timber-and-rattan chairs and art deco chandeliers, embodies a judicious yet serene vibe.
Her own home is equally placid, albeit with a more affecting backdrop. Beale resides in a pre-war black-and-white bungalow on elevated topography that offers a vast aspect of sky and treetops. Built for senior medical staff in the Royal Army Medical Corps deployed to the Alexandra Military Hospital in the 1940s, the house’s design features a marriage of appropriated mock-Tudor and Malay vernacular elements, such as wooden ventilation grilles reconstituted
