- Posted on 16 Apr 2025
After a long career as one of Australia’s best known interior designers, Michael Love is gifting a global perspective to the next generation of design students.
Australian interior designer Michael Love was a teenager the first time he travelled to Europe. When he stepped off the boat that transported him from Sydney to Naples (“in those days, we went by ship,” he says), his world turned upside down.
“Prior to that trip, I had a fairly isolated, typical upbringing here in Sydney.” Michael recalls. “I just couldn’t believe that this world existed in the way it did and how fabulous and inspiring it was.”
The legacy of that first voyage and the travel that Michael has done in the intervening years sits at the heart of what has been an incredible career. For the last 5 decades, he has been one of Australia’s best-known interior designers, working with clients and leading architects to create some of Sydney’s most beautiful interior spaces.
Now, he has made the remarkable decision to share his love of creativity and travel via a gift in his will to the UTS Faculty of Design and Society. Michael’s gift will enable talented design students to travel abroad and seek design inspiration from across the world. This is particularly important in a country like Australia, where students often miss out on the cross-pollination of ideas and creativity that can come from proximity to other design cultures.
“Travel has been so important in my life, and I hope that it would be important to the students who receive this support,” Michael says.
According to Professor James Bennett, Dean of the Faculty of Design and Society, gifts like Michael’s offer far more than a plane ticket for young people seeking adventure.
“UTS believes international experiences make our students more creative, more curious and more compelling as future global citizens, employees and leaders," James says.
We are incredibly proud to have donors like Michael who make these opportunities within reach of more of our diverse student body.
For Michael, the sentiment is far simpler. He has enjoyed a long and storied career doing what he loves most, and now, as an elder statesman of the profession, has the opportunity to pay it forward to future generations.
“I think you give with your heart,” Michael says.
If what I’m giving can inspire a student the way it inspired me for my whole life, that will be thanks indeed.
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