Flatiron Penthouse, New York (Private Residence)

Little James

Longview

First Pearl

Ironbark House

Los Angeles (Private Residence)

Elizabeth Bay Apartment

Tamarama

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STUDIO CARSON KELLY is an ARCHITECTURE and INTERIOR DESIGN practice creating personal, purposeful spaces that deepen the connection between people and place.

Studio Carson Kelly

A holiday home shaped by calm, clarity, and meditative precision. What began as the reconstruction of a fragmented coastal apartment evolved into something quieter - an interior distilled to its essentials, rebuilt from the base structure but guided by a single idea: to create space for stillness.

Set high above the Sunshine Coast, the apartment leans into its outlook. Curved walls, finished in hand-trowelled microcement, soften the plan and draw light gently across the surface of each room. Neutral tones, stones, and warm timbers form a tonal palette that feels both refined and grounding - materials chosen not to impress, but to endure, to deepen in character, to live with the shifting coastal light.

First Pearl is, at its heart, a place of calm immersion. A residence where architecture withdraws just enough for the landscape to breathe, and where the experience of living - light, shadow, sea - becomes the true expression of luxury.

Currently in progress. The interior realisation of a private full-floor penthouse atop one of New York's most iconic landmark buildings.

Lucian’s Glebe showroom is conceived not as a traditional retail space, but as a working studio – a place where the transformative potential of light can be both studied and experienced. Designed for the architectural lighting brand’s growing Sydney team, the project brings together office, workshop and gallery-like functions within a single, immersive environment.

Our intention was simple: to create a setting that reflects Lucian’s values of collaboration, rigour and design-led thinking. The space is warm and quietly restrained, yet highly functional – a domain where fittings can be tested against real architectural conditions, and where light itself becomes the primary material. Scale, texture and atmosphere shift throughout the interior, revealing how illumination can shape spatial perception with extraordinary subtlety.

Lucian Lighting

In progress. 

A private residence a few streets from the Pacific. We've been commissioned to compose — interiors, furnishing and a considered art collection. Pieces sourced globally, set in quiet conversation. 

Wimbo Park House reimagines a heritage terrace by opening it toward the green expanse of Wimbo Park and strengthening its connection to the Surry Hills community. Opposite the renewed park, the design allows the home to breathe outward - drawing landscape, daylight and neighbourhood activity deep into the interior.

The exterior is intentionally calm. A restrained palette and softened upper addition allow the house to blend into both terrace row and tree canopy, maintaining cohesion with its neighbours while gently engaging the park across the street. 

Wimbo Park House is an architecture of context and generosity - one that gives back through openness, respects the history of the terrace row, and embraces the landscape that defines this pocket of Surry Hills.

Wimbo Park House

Crafted on a remarkably tight parcel of land, less than four metres wide, Little James is a study in precision and light. What begins as a constraint of width becomes an opportunity for clarity - an architecture distilled to its essential moves, where every line, opening, and material carries purpose.

Rather than resisting the narrowness, the design embraces it. Spaces are arranged in a linear sequence, unfolding gradually from front to back, with moments of pause created through shifts in light and volume. The home feels neither compressed nor confined, but carefully calibrated - a quiet choreography of compression and release.

Inside, the palette departs from restraint in favour of richness and tactility. Colourful marbles, stainless steel, and patched terrazzo floors introduce layers of texture and reflection, balanced by bespoke natural bricks developed specifically for the house. These elements are not applied as surface, but composed with intent - each material contributing to a heightened sensory experience within a compact footprint.

Openings are placed with care, capturing fragments of sky and vegetation and offering moments of release within the density of the urban setting. 

Little James is an architecture of intensity and precision. A home where limitation is met with invention, and where material, light, and space are carefully orchestrated to create a deeply considered way of living.


Perched above Elizabeth Bay with an uninterrupted sweep of Sydney Harbour, this apartment offered an extraordinary outlook but little else. What we first encountered was a time capsule of 1980s excess - low ceilings, heavy granite, awkward circulation, and a compartmentalised plan that actively worked against the site’s potential.

Working closely with designer Gillian Khaw, we approached the project as the re-staging of a classic apartment: a disciplined architectural edit that allowed for expressive interior moments without compromising spatial logic.

Shaped with the precision of a jeweller’s hand, the Tamarama Residence is envisioned as a jewel set quietly against the rugged edge of Mackenzies Bay. Still in its making, the home is guided by a singular idea: to craft a place where the artistry of living and the rhythm of the ocean meet.

Set on a compact corner parcel in the heart of Balmain - little more than 215 square metres, bound by a heritage terrace at its front and a steep fall to the rear - Longview is a study in generosity drawn from constraint. What begins as a limitation of site becomes an argument for invention: rather than building out and over its neighbours, the home grows down and inward, finding the room a young family needs within the ground itself.

A new lower level is won from the slope, excavated to become the relaxed heart of the house - a family room opening to the garden, with a cellar set into the hill. Above, the original terrace is restored and given back its life, its rooms unfolding from entry through living and dining to a generous kitchen. The upper floor lifts the household into the light, where bedrooms gather around a first-floor terrace and roof garden, and long views reach north toward the Parramatta River. The sequence is one of descent and ascent - of gathering below and retreat above - a quiet choreography of compression and release.

Longview is an architecture of generosity and restraint - a home where the limits of a small site are met with invention, and where light, level and material are orchestrated to hold the fullness of family life.

A home shaped by landscape, regulation, and quiet resilience. What began as a response to strict bushfire controls became something more - an architecture defined not by limitation, but by clarity. Set within a rugged coastal escarpment in New South Wales, Ironbark House is a study in how constraint can sharpen intention, grounding a family home in both protection and place.

Clad entirely in corrugated zincalume steel, the exterior reads as a series of calm, barn-like forms - durable, unobtrusive, and attuned to the shifting coastal light. 

Organised around a central courtyard, the home unfolds as two distinct volumes. Positioned according to bushfire setbacks and natural topography, the plan yields a rare experience: a single-level home that feels suspended within the branches. From a bed or a lounge chair, the view meets the mid-to-high canopy, offering a sense of being held gently among the trees.

Inside, the palette remains pared back. Windows capture the passing shadows of the surrounding bush, allowing the landscape to animate the interiors throughout the day. Moments of stillness emerge naturally, created not by ornament but by proportion, framing, and a deep respect for site.

Ironbark House is, at its core, an architecture of context and restraint. A home where process is valued over gesture, and where the quiet logic of environment - topography, climate, vegetation - becomes the foundation for a grounded, enduring way of living.

One of two new homes designed side by side in Rose Bay. Neighbours, not twins.

Rose Bay One

Rose Bay Two

A knock-down rebuild in the heart of Paddington, Sydney.

Paddington One

A new build on the NSW South Coast. A family's holiday home, and one day, the place they retire to.

Culburra Beach House

Tamarama Two

Alterations and additions to a heritage home in Paddington, Sydney.