When two designers spend the better part of a decade imagining what they might build together, the result tends to carry a certain charge. A Surry Hills terrace called Fitzroy is exactly that: the first collaboration between Christine Rose Design and Studio Liu, two emerging studios whose founders, Christine and Louise, met nearly a decade ago at another practice and have been close friends ever since. The project, on Gadigal Land in Sydney, represents a long-held ambition to work together finally realized in a compact inner-city home.
The designers, Christine and Louise, had talked for years about joining forces. Fitzroy is where that conversation landed. Louise Liu’s previous project, FY Residence on Sydney’s North Shore, graced these pages back in 2024, a study in quiet, considered material curation. Fitzroy shifts gear — looser, more playful, and shaped by its clients as much as its designers. The brief, from a young professional couple, was beguilingly simple: they wanted something less ordinary.
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A spatial puzzle solved by going up
Architecture studio City Geeks had already been engaged to crack the spatial puzzle, and a puzzle it was: a 90-square-meter site with two bedrooms, one bathroom, and barely room to move. Their answer was to build up rather than out, lifting the home from two levels to three. The vertical strategy not only increased the usable area but also allowed the designers to carve out a series of interconnected volumes that feel far larger than the tight footprint suggests.
A third bedroom, a second bathroom, and a dedicated home office were threaded into the plan. Each new room was positioned to capture natural light and improve circulation, turning a once-cramped layout into a sequence of spaces that flow easily from one to the next. Skylights and lofty ceilings draw daylight deep into the building, turning a tired terrace into a warm, light-filled retreat from the city at its doorstep.
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Japanese restraint meets expressive color
Inside, the two studios leaned into the Japanese concept of ma — the charged interval between things, both physical and emotional. It surfaces in subtle transitions, sculpted voids, and a deliberate interplay of form and emptiness. The home invites a pause rather than filling every corner. Corridors narrow and then open into generous volumes, creating a rhythm of compression and release that guides movement through the house. Certain areas are left deliberately unadorned, letting the empty space itself become a design element that heightens the impact of what surrounds it.
Texture and warmth do the heavy lifting, layered with a curated collection of vintage pieces that give the rooms real personality. The vintage items are placed to highlight the intervals between them, reinforcing the sense of ma. Then there’s the color, used with intent: deep burgundy, barely-there mint, deep olive, and powdery blue. It’s a palette as expressive and a touch cheeky as the couple who live here.
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Fitzroy reads as a study in dualities: compression and release, solidity and openness, presence and absence. Solid masonry walls give way to open voids; quiet, introspective corners sit beside lively social spaces. It’s a home about how we live and grow within our walls — and about the particular alchemy that happens when design minds who truly click finally get to play.
Interior Design by Christine Rose Design & Studio Liu. Architecture by City Geeks. Editorial styling by Tom Mesker. Photography by Nicholas Wilkins.
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