Registered architects · Sydney & Melbourne
Yan Honda Architects designs high-end homes, dual occupancies, apartments and commercial spaces across Sydney's North Shore and Eastern Suburbs.
20 minutes with Gus Honda, our nominated architect. No sales pitch, no obligation.
NSW Registered Architect 9435
VIC Registered 00181
14+ years, houses to Class 2
Offices in North Sydney & Melbourne
The part nobody warns you about
Most people meet an architect, fall in love with the drawings, and then discover the hard part. The DA that sits with council for a year. The scheme that comes back $400,000 over what you can actually build. The designer who hands over plans and vanishes the moment a builder has a question.
Approval is not a formality. It is where projects die.
We design backwards from that. Every scheme starts with what your site, your zoning and your council will actually allow, then we push the design as far as those limits permit. You get a home you love and an approval you can bank on.
Why Yan Honda
Gus Honda is a registered architect. Ted Yan is a BDAA accredited building designer with 16+ years on high-end homes. You get architectural thinking and documentation discipline in the same room, not billed separately by two firms.
McMahons Point. Crows Nest. Chatswood. Vaucluse. Bondi. West Pymble. Northbridge. Carlingford. We have taken schemes through these councils and we design to their controls from day one, not after the first rejection.
Most boutique studios stop at houses. We deliver single dwellings, dual occupancies, apartment buildings and mixed-use developments, including a four-storey Crows Nest project with 12 apartments and affordable housing GFA.
Kaizen (改善) is the Japanese principle of continuous improvement. In practice it means we do not stop at the first scheme that works. We refine until the plan earns every square metre you are paying to build.
Gus works with you and your consultants from concept through construction. No handover to a junior once the DA is lodged.
Our team designs interiors in-house. Joinery, light, materials and flow are resolved while the walls can still move, which is the only time it is cheap to change them.
Selected work
Crows Nest · Apartments, 2025
Chatswood · White Birch & Night Birch, 2025
Chatswood · House, 2024
Pymble · House, 2024
Collaroy · House, 2025
Bondi · Apartments, coming soon
Carlingford · Childcare centre, 2024
Hospitality · Hotel
Project imagery and details sourced from Yan Honda Architects.
How it works
20 minutes. We look at your site, your zoning, your budget and tell you honestly what is possible. Free.
We measure, survey the constraints and build a brief around how you actually want to live or trade.
Sketch options, 3D views, and a build cost reality check before you fall in love with something you cannot afford.
DA or CDC, documented properly, coordinated with consultants, lodged and defended through council.
Construction documentation, tender support and site involvement until it is finished.
改善 - Kaizen
Kaizen is the Japanese practice of continuous improvement. At Yan Honda it is not decoration. It is why a scheme goes through four iterations instead of one, why we question a wall at 90% documentation if moving it makes the house better, and why we treat every project as something to be improved rather than delivered.
“A pursuit of perfection. The will to always improve and make things better.”
What we design
Architect-designed dwellings on Sydney's North Shore and Eastern Suburbs, designed to your site and your council's controls.
Extract more from the land you already own, from a second storey to a full dual occupancy.
Class 2 buildings, mixed-use and developer projects, documented to the standard that gets them approved and built.
Childcare centres, offices, warehouses, retail fit-outs, hotels and restaurants, designed around how the business actually runs.
Clients
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Project film
A closer look at Yan Honda projects, from the relationship between material and light to the spaces people move through every day.
Watch the practice’s built work as a continuous study of proportion, texture and natural light, across residential and commercial architecture.
Explore selected workBefore we begin
Clear answers before you commit time or money to a design.
Your site, your next move
Twenty minutes with our nominated architect. Bring your address and a rough budget and we will tell you honestly what is possible, what it is likely to cost, and whether we are the right studio for it. If we are not, we will say so.
