01
Interior Architecture — Charleston & Los Angeles
Interiors composed
Interiors composed
around light.
Marlowe & Ash is a small interior architecture studio shaping private residences and boutique hospitality — an unhurried, material-first hand, proportion resolved before a single surface is chosen.
We do not decorate rooms.
We resolve them —
proportion first, then material, then light,
until nothing is left to add, and nothing to take away.
02 — Portfolio
Selected Works
03 — The Studio
Two coasts,
Two coasts,
one discipline.
Marlowe & Ash was founded in 2011 on a simple conviction: that a well-made room is quieter than the life lived in it. We began in Charleston, restoring the bones of single houses and Federal-era townhouses along the peninsula, learning proportion from buildings that had already survived two centuries of it.
The Los Angeles studio opened a decade later, drawn by a different kind of light — flatter, harder, more generous — and by clients building new rather than restoring old. The two offices trade sketches weekly. Neither has ever designed a room the other hasn't argued about first.
Today the practice takes on a small number of private residences and boutique hospitality projects each year, each one carried from first sketch to final placement of furniture by the same small team.
Imogen Ash
Principal, Creative DirectorDesmond Marlowe
Principal, Director of Architecture
04 — Process
How a room is made.
01 — Enquiry
A conversation, not a questionnaire. We walk the site or the plans, talk through how you actually intend to live, and decide honestly whether we're the right studio for the project.
02 — Concept
Spatial studies, material palettes and hand-drawn elevations, presented as a single considered narrative for the home — not a menu of options to choose between.
03 — Documentation
Every millwork detail, lighting circuit and stone edge drawn and specified in full before a single tradesperson is engaged, so nothing is resolved on site.
04 — Delivery
Weekly site visits, procurement, and a final placement day where our own team sets every object in the room by hand before the client walks through.
05 — Materials
A working palette.
White Oak, Rift-Sawn
Unlacquered Brass
Hand-Applied Limewash
Honed Travertine
Bouclé Weave
Hover or focus a tile
A masterclass in restraint — every room breathes.
Coastal Interiors Quarterly
Marlowe & Ash have quietly become the studio Charleston's oldest houses call first.
The Charleston Review
Not a single unnecessary gesture. This is interior architecture as editing.
Form & Field
07 — Enquire
Begin a project.
Tell us a little about the house, the site, or the space you're considering. We reply personally, within two business days, to every enquiry that reaches us.
Received
Thank you.
Your enquiry has reached the studio. We read every one personally and will be in touch within two business days.