A Surry Hills Terrace Where Friendship, Colour & Japanese Restraint Collide.

When two designers spend the better part of a decade imagining what they might build together, the result tends to carry a certain charge. Fitzroy—a transformed terrace in Sydney’s Surry Hills, on Gadigal Land—is exactly that: the first collaboration between Christine Rose Design and Studio Liu, two emerging studios whose founders, Christine and Louise, first crossed paths nearly ten years ago at another practice. Close friends ever since, they’d long talked about joining forces, and this compact inner-city home is where that ambition finally landed.

Louise Liu’s 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 as much by its clients as its designers.

The brief, from a young professional couple, was beguilingly simple—they wanted something less ordinary. Architecture studio City Geeks had already been engaged to crack the spatial puzzle, and a puzzle it was: a tight 90-square-metre site, two bedrooms, one bathroom, barely room to move. Their response was to build up rather than out, lifting the home from two levels to three. A third bedroom, a second bathroom and a dedicated home office were threaded in, while skylights and lofty ceilings draw daylight deep into the plan — turning a tired terrace into a warm, light-filled retreat from the city at its doorstep.

Studio Carson Kelly's Little James Proves Constraint Can Be the Best Design Brief.

Studio Carson Kelly's Little James treats constraint not as a problem to solve but as the condition that sharpens every move.

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; a home designed to invite a pause rather than fill every corner. Texture and warmth do the heavy lifting, layered with a curated collection of vintage pieces that lend the rooms real personality.

Then there’s the colour, used with intent: deep burgundy, barely-there mint, deep olive and powdery blue—a palette as expressive and a touch cheeky as the couple who live here.

Fitzroy reads as a study in dualities: compression and release, solidity and openness, presence and absence. 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.

Old Bones, New Metal: Retallack Thompson Makes the Case for Galvanised Steel in Heritage Homes.

What if the most appropriate material for a traditional terrace house isn’t the traditional one? That’s the central question behind Surry Hills renovation by Retallack Thompson that introduces galvanised steel throughout a refurbished Victorian terrace.

[Interior Design by Christine Rose Design & Studio Liu. Architecture by City Geeks. Editorial styling by Tom Mesker. Photography by Nicholas Wilkins.]