Margot Ellison

Margot Ellison grew up in Charleston and studied at RISD. She runs a small studio from New Orleans, where she specialises in adaptive reuse of historic Southern architecture. Her palette draws from oyster shells, Spanish moss, and faded indigo.

@margotellison margotellison.com

Preview - An Antebellum House, Held Lightly

Working on historic Southern architecture requires a kind of ethical patience I didn't fully understand until this project. The house — a pre-Civil War single in the Ansonborough neighbourhood of Charleston — had been through six owners and four renovations before it came to my clients, a historian and her sculptor husband. Parts of it had been, as the historian put it, "improved to within an inch of its life." Our work was largely corrective.

Athens, Greece

Preview - A House Built Around a Bougainvillea

The bougainvillea had been growing on the south wall of the house for sixty years. It was, when I first visited, clearly the most important thing on the property. My clients agreed. The entire renovation was organised around its continued existence.