Many Melburnian’s will remember the address of the newly opened Garden State Hotel as the former location of the iconic ‘80s and ‘90s hospitality venue Rosati. Technē has completely rebuilt the venue while preserving its distinctive exterior, itself a heritage Victorian era building that began life as a textile mill in 1896. The hugely ambitious 2000 square-metre project, with a capacity for 840 guests, preserves much of the original textile factory’s sawtooth roof while opening its central bays to form a terraced beer garden that sits at the heart of the venue. It has the feel of a hidden botanical haven, a startling oasis in the middle of the CBD’s network of laneways.

Technē is a leader in the architectural design of innovative new generation pubs, concentrating on providing vibrant, friendly and liveable pub architecture that meets the needs of their  increasingly urban patrons. Creating spaces that are warm, welcoming and intriguing, with unique architectural details and design, plays a critical role in this trend of making spaces that contemporary city-dwellers can effectively use as their own living rooms. Technē’s new style of pub is the return to treating hospitality venues as an extension of domestic space.

“Within the Melbourne CBD there is probably no other hospitality venue, based on the spirit of a pub, that offers a comparable variety of spaces and experiences under the one roof,” Northrop says.

Garden State Hotel has the dynamism of Technē and Sand Hill Road’s earlier projects, amongst which are a string of successful high-end pubs including the Bridge Hotel, Richmond Club Hotel, Terminus Hotel and Prahran Hotel.

Technē’s design for Garden State Hotel links vertically integrated spaces across four levels, encouraging a sense of exploration and movement throughout the venue.

As well as the multi-level beer garden at its centre, the project involved the creation of a street level public bar at the front of the site and a five-level structure at the rear. The sophisticated Technē design creates a flow between spaces diverse in function, capacity and architectural inspiration.