Briallen Kotsu

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Briallen Kotsu is an emerging interior architecture designer with a keen eye for creating spaces that blend functionality, well-being, and aesthetic innovation. Currently focused on workspace, retail, and community design, she takes a hands-on approach to her work, often creating models to explore ideas and refine spatial concepts. She has a natural talent for rearranging rooms and making spaces both beautiful and user-friendly, ensuring every environment she designs feels thoughtful, practical, and engaging.

In addition to her design pursuits, Briallen maintains a balanced lifestyle that fuels both her creativity and discipline. A dedicated jiujitsu practitioner, she trains intensively while also committing to weightlifting, daily walks with her dog, and personal art projects. This combination of rigorous physical practice and creative exploration informs her approach to spatial design, emphasising ergonomics, flow, and human-centred experiences.

She is passionate about the integration of neuroarchitecture principles, using light, form, and spatial layout to positively impact cognitive and emotional well-being. Her projects often focus on versatile workspaces, sustainable design, and subtle connections to nature, such as incorporating biophilic elements and sensory-rich materials. She is dedicated to shaping thoughtful, engaging, and innovative environments for the communities and clients she serves.

Neuro Nest

A bespoke desk system featuring built-in plant holders that divide workspaces while maintaining visual connection. The integration of greenery softens boundaries, enhances focus, and brings nature directly into the workspace — fostering a sense of calm and connection.

Neuro Nest

These work pods offer a calm and grounded space for focused work. Each pod features soft, dim lighting and a warm bronze wall that creates a sense of depth and comfort as you enter. Though partially enclosed, the pods remain open to the surrounding environment, balancing privacy with connection to the larger workspace.

Neuro Nest

A custom triangular acoustic panel that echoes the geometry of the existing sawtooth roofline. Designed to soften sound and enhance comfort, the panel integrates seamlessly into the spatial language of the building, uniting form and function through subtle architectural rhythm.

Post Office

A sleek reinterpretation of the traditional post office — designed as a refined, functional, and community-focused space. Clean lines, modern materials, and a warm tonal palette create a balance between efficiency and approachability, transforming an everyday service into an inviting public experience.

Post Office

This sleek, contemporary post office balances functionality with well-being. Designed with certified workplace standards in mind, it ensures a safe and efficient environment for both staff and visitors. The space includes a thoughtfully planned upstairs office, tucked away from the public areas, giving workers a quiet retreat to focus, recharge, and disconnect when needed. Every detail—from layout to lighting—supports productivity while maintaining a welcoming experience for the community.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.