1 Spring Street is a minimalist studio interior located in Melbourne, Australia, designed by Studio Kennon. The project poses a question that sits at the center of contemporary practice: what does a creative studio actually need to produce meaningful work? For Studio Kennon, the answer required a building with its own architectural authority – Harry Seidler’s 1989 cylindrical tower, originally constructed as Shell headquarters, offered something rare in Melbourne’s commercial stock. The curve, expressed in the building’s granite-clad exterior and carried through its interior volumes, became the organizing motif around which Studio Kennon built an entirely new layer of inhabitation.

The intervention is deliberately restrained. Rather than imposing a separate aesthetic identity, the studio absorbed the base building’s material logic – dense exposed aggregates and large granite slabs – and reinterpreted it through natural renders, plasters, and textured wall finishes that introduce warmth without contradiction. The palette operates the way a well-tuned instrument does: it extends the original register rather than introducing competing notes. Seidler’s curve reappears in a sweeping wall that flanks the heritage-listed stair and draws movement through the entry lounge – a space that doubles as a gallery – before opening into the main working areas beyond.

The spatial sequencing reflects a considered understanding of how creative work actually unfolds. The entry lounge functions as threshold and gallery simultaneously, establishing a contemplative register before the work begins. Beyond it, the library and design room are positioned with an intentionally residential quality – shelved walls carrying architecture, art, fashion, and literature texts, repurposed designer furniture, and collected artworks arranged as a revolving display. The library sits at the boundary between studio and private residence, a distinction Studio Kennon treats not as a tension to resolve but as a productive ambiguity.