The National Hotel
344 Victoria St
Richmond VIC 3121
03 9429 8811

 

 

project team
design: Breathe Architecture
av: Pink Noise Audio
construction: Ficus Construction

 

featured venue > the national hotel, melbourne
  


 
The Victorian era National Hotel, endures in a new century, in the Chinese quarter of Victoria Street, disconnected from the community it is now apart of.

The National has been re-imagined to respond to its present context – in which 21st century China has shaken its image of a quaint, exotic and mysterious land. Presenting instead a more menacing and vast economic power.

Between eras and cultures, the hotel is "the people's republic", a place for people to gather proudly as equals. Calling for an architecture of utilitarian sensibility: everything is robust and unpretentious, everything serves a purpose.

The Victorian shell was stripped of 100 years of renovations, down to its bones and internal workings. The space was then divided into 'provinces' and governed by one central commanding body - the bar. Monumental, the bar forms a wall stretching the length of the building from the inside to out, enabling staff behind to easily survey and serve patrons in any of the five 'provinces'. Each with it's own vernacular, unified yet different.

Cafe - Designed to engage and activate the street frontage, the café bridges the threshold and spills out into the street. With custom-made furniture, planter boxes, wall hung awning and street bicycle parking, the explorer is ushered inward. Fixed glass windows were replaced to become operable, ventilating the space naturally and allowing occupants to interact with the passer-by.




Allen & Heath iDR-8

iDR-8 is a 16 x 16 matrix mixer with an extensive array of audio management tools designed to reduce the need for additional devices for an installation, or carried in the hire inventory. Allen & Heath preamps, 24bit converters and fixed DSP architecture ensure that concert-quality low-latency sound is delivered efficiently to where it is needed.

TAG

The Booth Seating - Beijing style urban congregation, up close and personal; it's the place for groups to eat and drink, a place for chance meetings and conversation. Recycled timber and tarpaulin cushions form large seating clusters around concrete and steel tables. Steel cages overrun by vines separate the booths from each other.
Recycled fence palings cut to form timber tiles reminiscent of the exposed lath and plaster ceilings above, hold recycled polyester acoustic batts and provide acoustic attenuation for intimate discussions.

The Opium Den - tucked into the corner of the plan, the 'opium den' offers an informal retreat space. Niches and openings in the walls have been patched with zinc sourced from the former cool room; each panel punched with braille-like characters, which appear to narrate the crevices of the refashioned space.

 
The Dining Room - neither completely internal nor external, the Dining Room traces the exterior wall of the original Hotel; its windows puncturing the space to offer glimpses into the working kitchen. An Ampelite skin over-clads existing rafters, while netting clasps acoustic batts to the ceiling and forms a trellis in wait of an ivy green lining. A trowelled concrete floor is striated with Ironbark strips running inside to out, visually binding the space to the courtyard as the south wall slides away.

The Courtyard - the decked courtyard is enclosed by tall, recycled brick walls from which a repurposed army tent has been stretched out taut to shade perimeter banquette seating clad with old stair timbers. Exterior partition walls of mismatched concrete blocks laid on their side in a hit and miss pattern, provide separation, connection, texture and shadow play. Compact fluorescent lamps in amber glass bottles hang from catenary wires across the courtyard, abstracting Chinese lantern strings.

The National Hotel is now the new republic for the people of Richmond. A place for people to come together in their own community – where the architecture, like the staff, is proud to serve.

The client requested that Pink Noise Audio deliver an even sound coverage across the whole venue with individual control for all five areas if required.

To achieve this Pink Noise Audio suggested an Allen & Heath IDR -8 Digital Matrix Mixer chosn for it's flexibility, capability for expansion, external control and ease of programming.

"We also needed something that at the touch of a button could keep all the house music routed to the appropriate areas whilst isolating say the beer garden, cafe, dining room or bar separately for either a function with a separate microphone and the ability to play music in that same zone, either DJ or Ipod etc," explained Stuart "morro" Morriss, General Manager, Pink Noise Audio. "For speakers we decided to go for the QSC AD S52 which are a great sounding grunty little weatherproof speaker - essential for the outside beer garden."

A total of twenty QSC AD S52 speakers were installed: four in the cafe, four in the dining, four in the den /booth area, two in the main bar
and six in the beer garden.

"As for Drive we needed to save a little cost so two existing domestic amps were used to start with for the bar and the booths/den and these will be upgraded at a later date," added Stuart.

Two QSC GX 3 amplifiers were installed, one for the vafe and one for the dining room, whilst a QSC RMX 1450 was installed for the beer graden.

With input devices, the venue mainly plays an iPod from the bar but they do have the ability to play from an upstairs music computer remotely.

To come will be the facility to add three screens and STB audio for occasions such as the AFL Grand Final and Melbourne Cup, this has to be installed as a user needs basis so temp/ permanent fixing is required.

Video will be done by an HDMi splitter into UTP – HDMI baluns whilst audio will be analog from the STB.

"Whilst installing and setting up Giles from TAG has been excellent as a sounding board for what I could achieve with their product," commented Stuart. "He has visited with me a few times to help tweak the programming which we both think now is pretty close."

 
 



editorial and advertising enquiries > Cat Strom 02 9457 8302 or 0400 825094 or cat@totalvenue.com.au
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