Marlowe & Ash — Interior Architecture
An interior architecture studio for houses with history and apartments with potential.
Drag to turn the room
We start where the sun comes in and work outward from there. It is a slower way to begin, and it saves a year of regret.
Three of the eight we take on each year. Every drawing below is drawn, not rendered — which is also how you will receive them.
Project 01
A 1908 greystone with good bones and eleven doors too many. We took out four walls, kept the garnet tile in the entry because it was the best thing in the building, and gave the stair back its window.
Project 02
Cast iron, twelve-foot windows, and nowhere to sleep. We built the two private rooms as furniture — freestanding oak boxes holding nothing up — so the shell stayed one long room with the light intact.
Project 03
North-facing, and dark from November to March. We moved the sink under the only good window, lined the upper wall in pale plaster to pass the light along, and put nothing shiny anywhere near it.
Four phases, in this order, every time. The first one is the one people are surprised by.
We spend the first meeting mostly quiet. How you cook, who visits, which room you avoid in February, what you would save if the house caught fire. Plans come later. None of them work without this.
We measure the whole place ourselves, by hand, twice. Old buildings lie. A half-inch at the door becomes three inches at the window, and three inches is the difference between a cabinet that fits and a cabinet that is scribed for a year.
You get drawings, not renderings. Plans, sections and elevations at a scale you can read across a table, with a pencil in your hand. Then we change them. Then we change them again, for as long as it takes.
We stay through the build. On site weekly, on the phone with the trades daily, and in the room the day the last coat goes on — because that is the day the small wrong things become permanent.
A short list we keep coming back to. Each one gets better with use, which is the whole test.
Walls
Breathes.
Joinery
Quiet grain.
Hardware
Ages.
Thresholds
Cold underfoot.
Seating
Soft edge.
Floors
Warm underfoot.
Two principals, one project manager, and a list of trades we have worked with for years.
Principal · Interiors
Trained at RISD, then eight years on the Herzog team in Basel before the winters called him back. Ren draws the first plan of every project by hand, usually twice, usually before anyone has asked for it.
Principal · Structure
Structures first: five years at SOM before she tired of buildings you could not touch. Iris is the one who tells you which wall can go, and which one is quietly holding up your bedroom.
Our studio is a second-floor room on Wabash with north light and too many drawings pinned to the wall. We do not have a house style. We have a way of working, and it tends to produce rooms that look like the people standing in them.
“A studio allergic to the unnecessary.”
Tell us about the room. We read and answer every note ourselves, which is why it takes a day or two.
We take on eight projects a year. Two of the eight are usually one difficult room, and those are often the best ones.
Thank you. The note is with us. Ren or Iris will write back within two working days — from a real address, with a real question.