Project Team

design: Josh Lefers

The Grand Trailer Park Taverna has a unique converted trailer park theme, and a fabulous outdoor area looking over the city.

The venue is the brainchild of Josh Lefers (Pawn & Co) and Dani Zieni from the award-winning Dandenong Pavilion. Among the renovated caravans, visitors can dine on a selection of delicious American home-style burgers, spiked milkshakes, cocktails and more.

Co-owner Josh Lefers, whose design of bar Pawn & Co. was named “One of the five most dazzling bars in the world” by Forbes Magazine, is the man behind The Grand Trailer Park Taverna’s unique design.

Working with Twig & Co on the construction, the restaurant and bar has a sophisticated yet retro feel, featuring two Winnebagos and two Airstream caravans, which have been converted into booths for visitors to dine in. The venue is also perfect for those hot summer days, when patrons can make use of the incredible balcony overlooking Bourke Street.

The site has an iconic location on the corner of Exhibition and Bourke Streets with a balcony overlooking Bourke Street. It also has a really awful, but wonderful, chandelier.

Josh wanted to create a casual wonderland. The trailer-park-meets-diner theme is an obvious nod to the West Coast of the US. The important thing for him was to ensure that he nailed the juxtaposition of a premium finish with the trailer park connotations.

In terms of ambience, he wanted the consumer to be able to have an interesting dining environment that didn’t overpower their own experience for a good night of enjoying burgers, beers and spiked milkshakes.

“I worked with an incredible construction team at Twig & Co. led by Ash Naulty,” said Josh. “He was able to transpose the design concepts into a built reality with an incredible craft that included design participation, and a deft delivery that was astounding.

“I had to work hard to consider how to create a space that nailed the brand positioning of premium/trailer park. Of course, the budget is always an obstacle. In the long stairwell entrance I would have liked to have an actual waterfall in our faux forest but what was delivered by the artist, Conrad Bizjak, is probably even better!”

When it came to programming and planning the space, Josh had a simple approach: it was all about researched images, placed in situ and then refined and placed into photos by Big Dog Creative graphic designer Raymond Harvey. From there they went to the plans but they kept on coming back to this beautiful picture document for pretty much everything.

Each individual airstream and caravan was developed specifically to fit the space, sometimes adjusting where required with Ash Naulty and the Twig & Co. team. Ash worked with Josh to ensure he had all the build elements functioning and Dani helped to map out the more practical customer seating requirements.

“One of the challenges was to work out how to work the entrance,” added Josh. “Initially I had wanted to have the same design style as the interior but then it felt like people would walk into the same thing right from the start. I eventually decided on creating the effect of the stairs as a waterfall, surrounded by a forest designed by the incredible artist Conrad Bizjak. So many people have since commented on how much they’ve enjoyed moving from a forest wonderland into the caravan park environment.”

Because Josh was creating a premium trailer park, everything was brand new from the start – which is rare for him, as he likes to use upcycled materials with human memories attached in every dent and scratch. Josh already understood that the concept itself conveyed retro, funky fun and he needed to instill some great polish.

“Elements such as the airstreams are made from material imported from the US, and the customized wallpaper is such an incredible material…and it’s reusable, too!” said Josh. “Other than that, I focused on using timber throughout the space to give warmth.

“My Nagymama and Nagypapa (Hungarian grandma and grandpa) lived in caravan sites for all of the years I knew them, so I probably had been fed these clashing, retro caravan park archetypes by osmosis as I grew up. I’d also travelled through LA and San Diego and gotten a real feel for that sort of lurid, surf culture colours and patterns, which seemed to resonate with what Dani and I both really loved.”The vertical mint stripes continue the caravan tradition and, on the balcony, the off-white to pallid-blue to vivid baby-blue stripes really pop, drawing attention from the street. The black and white used behind the bar and in the oversized chequered tiles work to maintain the style and design while toning down the colour.

“Aaron McKenzie, a fine arts interior designer, did me a favour and came in for a fantastic cameo consultation,” added Josh. “He really helped to solidify these colour elements. For the toilets, I wanted to invoke nostalgia of camping trips with family and friends through a cabin-in-the-forest vibe, and chose long, woodgrain tiles, contrasted by horizontal caravan exterior paintworks.”

The concept behind the name, The Grand Trailer Park Taverna, is to create a unified combination of a seated bar with airstream booths, caravan booths and a fresh timber annex. These elements were intended to come together as the mainstay of the space. But, ironically, it is the superfluous elements that somehow brought it all together. The forest and waterfall stairwell, the cabin toilets… they weren’t necessary – they certainly were additional – but they moved the concept into more than a contrived, theming trope.

The festoon lighting is an obvious choice and, with the chandelier in the centre of the room, the brand juxtaposition of premium/trailer park shines through.

“I wouldn’t be the first to say, “keep lighting low to create a vibe”, and because we’ve got so much natural light I’ve been conscious of this,” commented Josh. “The neon trims in the caravans that are colour-matched to the wallpaper are an effective feature, as are the blue-white strips on the stairwell that give the effect of a moving waterfall as you walk up the stairs.”

The wallpaper in the caravan booths is by an artist called GT who used his customized printer that he uses to deck out his own house!

“That might be my favorite feature because the other supplier pulled out the day before we were due to open and GT was like a guy who thrives on that kind of challenge, and will just pull something out the bag better than you can have ever expected. What a guy!”