Project Team

design: March Studio
structural engineering: CoStruct
av: Custom Sound and Vision

Suppliers

custom light fittings: March Studio & Mance Design.
custom stools: March Studio, Charlie Sandford & RockMartin
custom tables: March Studio
chairs: Barbera Design

Lucy Liu is solid brick and soaring timber, textured concrete and smooth steel. She includes with pools of light and intrigues with shadowplay. Down a lane, up an alley, through a back door, she beckons with red neon.

In an old room which has seen many outfits, the designers have shed layers revealingly, brushing up the skin beneath. Then they’ve added layers which make the most of the high ceilings, making timbers fold past each other, opening up the space and creating pockets of intimacy.

“As demolition proceeds and we learn more about the space we’ve designed for, the unexpected is seen as an opportunity, not an obstacle, for character and idiosyncrasy to be evidenced in the space,” said Rodney Eggleston, main designer.

Lucy calls many places home. Just as her food comes from throughout Asia, her timbers recall bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong and Shanghai and there are memories of Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel in her bricks and overlapped corners.

“An informal restaurant and bar offering a pan-Asian menu, the space was intended to evoke memories from across Asia,” added Rodney. “Reminiscent of refined hotels and hectic city streets, the dining room and bar show a robust aesthetic. The major move was to shift the main entrance to the space from the major street frontage to the back lane. This shift naturally split the space between dining and bar. The kitchen addressing the dining room and the bar - window lit and visible from the lane - addressing casual seating was a simple progression once this move was established.”

An open kitchen commands one side of the room, sending out dishes through a cluster of high tables. The main space holds a spread of low dining tables, beneath the light folds and heavy cantilevers of timber. To the Russell St side, booths provide private space for large groups to get raucous, bathed in red light, surrounded by high brick walls and tall windows. Opposite, a bar runs the length of the laneway wall, all brick and stone and steel, timber shelves running up between windows and lighting bottles, with a scattering of high tables in front for drinks and snacks.

The material selection was part and parcel of the design from the beginning. Memories of bamboo scaffolding from Shanghai construction sites prompted the use of timber battens throughout. A hint of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo suggested the use of slender profile bricks. Steel and stone benchtops reinforced the robustness of the space.

The timber battens - lining line the walls and ceilings, folding down here and there, denser in places, sparser in others - tie the space together. Lighting behind the battens produces lovely moire patterns, adding another layer of visual striping to the space.

“We don’t use applied finishes very much at March Studio, so the colour scheme and textural qualities quite naturally fell out of the material selection process,” commented Rodney. “The furniture and joinery is always a labour of love on our restaurant projects. The opportunity to work with some excellent fabricators, to marry their expertise with our vision, is always special.”

The red neon at entrance and bathrooms is a nice touch, dirtying up the space and enticing patrons in.

Custom Sound and Vision designed and installed a Bose system with Bose Acoustimass modules configured to run in stereo low impedance. Added to the sixteen Bose Free Space 3 Satellite speakers are six Redback C2188 100v line in ceiling flush mount speakers.

The audio is designed so that it, does not matter where you sit, you will have stereo separation and sound is three dimenional instead of one. Liberty 14 gauge double insulated speaker cable used for enhanced detail as well.

Control4 Controller and Audio Matrix equipment are used for distributing audio to five zones with individual level control and each zone can be equalised as well. Control4 controller’s audio output is assigned to one of the audio matrix’s input to provide Built in TuneIn internet radio stations or stream audio from a NAS drive. This means that multiple playlists can be automated to play automatically everyday with automated audio levels per zone.

Any maintenance and programming can be done remotely.

Sonos player is another source for playing online music services e.g Spotify, Deazer, etc.

FreeSpace® 3
subwoofer/satellite systems

High-performance, extended-range systems designed for small to medium-sized installed applications requiring high fidelity and extended bandwidth reproduction of voice and music. Surface and flush components can be mixed and matched to provide greater flexibility to suit a wide range of applications.

Bose