After 159 years in service, Melbourne’s oldest coaching hotel found itself consumed by the tall shadows of its urban surrounds and in need of
a new narrative to connect it to the regenerating skirts of the Melbourne CBD.

To rebel against this darkness, Captain Melville resurrects the antecedent experiences of the gold rush era using material mixology.

The architecture called for a repurposed aesthetic, responding to the gold rush inspired environment without creating a colonial museum or cliché.
Listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, the hotel was sensitively stripped back to form an empty field ready for a new story to be told
throughout. Previously boarded up skylights and windows were unbound, the masked exterior uncovered, linings and varnishes shaven.

Further influence of the rebel spirit brings a layer of chaos and asymmetry to the steel bar design and a layer of steel mesh to the materiality representing his incarceration. The perimeter is lined with intimate seating intended for dining, whilst two large communal tables provide a place to gather around to drink and story tell.

Meanwhile, the large dining hall to the rear which works like a mess hall, is lined city with habitable peaked tent structures and communal
tables to provoke interaction between strangers, the hall evokes an ambience reminiscent of early tent cities of varying silhouettes and
comradeship. This idea of repetition and the simple form of the tent, of

the materials of the settlement of the day (steel, timber & canvas) laid
over the landscape formed the conceptual framework for the design and selection of materials.

Captain Melville is a rebel spirit at the pulse of the city action.The owners organised the sound system which in the front bar are NEXO PS 8 and back dining they are NEXO GEO S 12 installed by 4ward Production. The owner says they are” fully sick “!