Project Team

design: KP Architects
av: Josh Frey Productions
music: Nightlife

Suppliers

lighting: Mica Lighting, Lumen 8, SEDAC Energy Management, LAD
furniture:
The Modern Furniture Store, Cafe Culture, Globe West,

The underlying principle for the project was to reinvent people’s perception of what a ‘tavern’ was. While the fabric of the building was structurally and aesthetically sound, unfortunately like many “Taverns” that appeared during the early eighties, the spaces were large, uninspiring and dated.

There was a strong desire to establish this venue as something that more reflected what a ‘pub’ used to once represent to its local community. A place for social interaction on a regular and informal basis rather than only on special occasions, similar to what a traditional pub in England would be to its local community.

Surrounded by carparks and roads, the tavern was landlocked so in order to achieve a program that introduced new spaces in particular external areas, the additions that were constructed over the years were peeled away. A large retail liquor outlet to the east was to incorporate part of what was the public bar of the opriginal tavern.
This meant that the taverns footprint was to be reduced.

Amalie Dining Chair

Solid European Beech Bentwood
Walnut with Floral Seat Stencil.

Cafe Culture


This benifited the hotels program, enabling spaces that were smaller and more human scale. It was also important to bring city atmosphere, materiality, and spatial connections to the suburbs.

To be less a big tavern and more a series of linked intimate spaces for eating, drinking and relaxing…hence the dropping of the word ‘ Tavern’ from the name.

To mark a strong change to the building’s exterior, a new alfresco dining area was designed in response to Queensland’s affection for outdoor dining. This space is anchored back to the original building with a chimney stack that houses a fireplace. The chimney also acts as an entry marker for customers directing them with carparks located at either ends of the tavern.

It was decided to relocate the gaming room from the main road front to the back and positon the bistro and external dining areas to the south to activate what was once a very dormant facade.

Customers can sit in a variety of spaces that are cleverly separated by low walls, a curved bar, planters, mesh screens, illuminated bottle displays, or a bench seat. The scale of the spaces have been considered to promote gatherings of either 1, 2 or 8 people in intimate surroundings.

To mitigate costs the existing kitchen was retained and became more centralised which allowed efficiencies to be possible in particular labour costs.

The hotel which was constructed in 1984 is located in the leafy suburb of Kenmore. Over the decades the local population and business community had expanded rapidly. Fresher and more vibrant hospitality venues were established so a refurbishment was long overdue.

Since the hotel was constructed, outdoor dining was a very important part of the venues program. There was therefore a strong desire to connect the outside with the inside. The tavern was lacking in comfortable outdoor spaces and to most people driving past towards the neighbouring shopping centre it looked closed and not very inviting.

Honest and robust materials and finishes were chosen that worked in unison with the existing face brick and concrete roof tile structure. The obvious ‘wow’ factors were rejected for an honest approach where country homestead meets French provincial bistro. Food and atmosphere are the heroes and the building is simply the back drop.

Customers can sit in a variety of spaces that are cleverly separated by low walls, a curved bar, planters, mesh screens, illuminated bottle displays, or a bench seat. The scales of the spaces have been considered to promote gatherings of 1, 2 or 8 people in intimate surroundings.

Peeling back decades of additions to the original building built in 1984 ,approximately 80% of the building was able to be retained. In addition the development of the adjoining retail outlet to the east enabled a further reduction of the foot print to a smaller manageable scale.

This allowed for the introduction of external naturally ventilated spaces reducing the demand for mechanically ventilated spaces in an attempt to reduce the hotels overall power demand.

A concerted effort was also made to reuse materials that were demolished as part of the refurbishment. Materials such as timber roof rafters and ceiling joists were reused for furniture, such as timber tops, and for decorative ceiling beams in the bistro and behind the bars as shelving.

The majority of the original incandescent and low voltage lights were removed and replaced with energy efficient led light fittings throughout other than new feature pendant lights.The introduction of more windows and doors would also help to deliver natural light to internal spaces in the building that were once necessary to be artificially illuminate. This again would contribute to the hotels energy efficiency performance during the daytime operating hours.

Bose ControlSpace

ControlSpace engineered sound processors are powerful digital signal processors that provide control and audio signal processing in a single, expandable unit.

Bose


Josh Frey Productions installed the audio system including 50 x Outline IC6 6″ ceiling speaker, 4 x Outline DVS8 8″ loudspeaker, and 2 x Outline 108 8″ Subwoofer. Power is supplied by 5 x Lab Gruppen E8:2 amplifier and 2 x Lab Gruppen E12:2 amplifier with a Bose ControlSpace 16 input 16 output Audio processor.