Check in to The Lobby
Ellison Studios unveils The Lobby, a concept space inside Melbourne’s historic Conway’s buildings that reimagines the hotel lobby as a place for work, culture and connection.
Set within Prahran’s landmark Conway’s buildings, The Lobby by Ellison Studios is less a showroom than a study in atmosphere. Conceived as a space defined by transition, the new concept environment takes cues from the world’s great hotel lobbies – those rare interiors where arrivals, departures and chance encounters give shape to the experience of a place.
Occupying a floor of the former department store on Chapel Street, the residency marks Ellison Studios’ first physical extension in Melbourne/Naarm. It follows the success of The Rental in Sydney’s Surry Hills while expanding the brand’s interest in creating immersive environments that extend beyond furniture alone. Here, inside a building originally designed by Tompkins and Tompkins in 1914, the studio has found the ideal setting for a concept centred on observation, movement and mood.
There is a cinematic quality to The Lobby from the outset. A 15-seat version of the brand’s Float sofa anchors the room – its largest modular configuration to date – while more intimate moments unfold through accent chairs, lighting and dining settings that shift easily into work mode. Art curated by Sydney’s Hake House of Art and a selection of rare books arranged by Melbourne’s Selected Objects contribute to the layered sensibility of the space, lending it the character of somewhere lived in, not merely styled.
This is central to the appeal of The Lobby. By day, it operates as a working environment for interior designers and trade partners – somewhere to meet clients, review finishes and experience the studio’s collections in a more relaxed and intuitive way. By night, the tone changes. Records are played, drinks are poured and the space takes on the ease and sociability of the hospitality settings that inspired it.
That duality sits at the heart of the project. Neither wholly public nor fully private, the lobby has long occupied a unique place in the cultural imagination – a setting for observation, encounter and quiet theatre. Ellison Studios leans into that in-between condition, transforming a heritage retail interior into a contemporary environment that feels at once familiar and fleeting.
Over the course of the residency, The Lobby will host talks, performances and gatherings, welcoming the wider creative community onto its restored parquetry floors. In doing so, Ellison Studios offers more than a physical extension of the brand: it presents a compelling idea of how design can frame experience – not as something static, but as something shaped in real time by the people who move through it.
