Project Team

design: Breathe Architecture

Suppliers

furniture: custom, Feelgood Designs, Cafe Culture + Insitu
upholstery: Mokum
lighting: Custom LED lighting by David Murray

The site, vacant for many years, was formerly an electrical transformer factory. The existing building had layers of character from its past, including a small courtyard tucked behind the warehouse covered in ivy, which became key to the design concept – to extend the experience of the garden inside. This concept interlinked perfectly with the owner’s intention to deliver an experience which was experimental yet simple.

There are two defining elements to the design. THE SHED + THE GARDEN. Low height concrete planter boxes create “plots” of intimate dining spaces. The bold timber clad shed nestled under the existing pitched roof, houses the back of house “tools” of the restaurant. Texture and low-tech simplicity is key to making the new design sit humbly within the existing building. The material palette is a collection of low embodied energy materials, common to the garden. In-situ concrete, recycled timber, mild steel, cyclone wire, raw brass fixtures, cement sheet, outdoor fabrics and an abundance of plants come together to transform the space.

Diners eat wholefood vegetarian surrounded by greenery and are reminded with every mouthful of Transformer’s modus operandi, which is quite simply, to honour the seasons. Instead of walking the mock meat path, vegetables are cast as heroes and each dish is a celebration of vegetables in their prime.

The architecture has transformed the space just as the menu transformers the diner without imposing a philosophy. 

C607 Barstool

by Yuzuru Yamakawa

Black powder coated frame with black polyethylene shell

Feelgood Designs