The original Urbane Restaurant is an icon of Brisbane dining with numerous awards and a substantial reputation. The redeveloped Urbane extends this philosophy of providing the highest quality food and service over four distinct dining and bar experiences.
The entire site of the original Urbane has been extended and redeveloped to incorporate a new Urbane, Euro, Sub-Urbane and The Laneway.
Urbane is envisaged as the quintessential fine dining experience, a notch up, if that’s possible, from what we all know and love. Sub Urbane is a linked cellar dining area, intimately positioned in the basement of the building, flanked by 100 year old stone walls and a well stocked cellar. Euro is a bistro providing great quality food in tandem with a humming bar experience. Euro stretches from Mary Street thru to the rear Lane behind providing a daylit luncheon space within this heritage building. The Laneway is a bar perched within the centre of the site, accessible from Mary Street or the Lane providing a hideaway bar to while away the hours with bar food of a calibre that isn’t available in the city.
The design creates four different but linked experiences within the one building. All of the venues are arranged around a central kitchen hub that has been substantially expanded to provide for the full range of food types from fine dining to bistro and bar cuisine. This engine room is supported by full back of house facilities needed to service up to 300 patrons and 30 staff in peak periods.
The Mary Street entry is opened with glass and covered in two distinct metal screens with a common entry point for Urbane and Euro. The Urbane screen is a bronze expanded mesh designed to conceal the lunch and dinner operations of the restaurant with sneaky glimpses of what lays beyond. The Euro screen is laser cut metal, exhibiting the food fare that lies beyond in graphic relief. Behind this screen, panels of green and pink glass lap over themselves to create an orange glow to the entry. At night, the lighting projects the patterns of the screen onto the footpath creating a lit threshold to the interior.
The rear Lane entry is lit from the Urbane end by a series of patterned lights along the laneway walls. From Margaret Street, The Laneway acts as a beacon hovering over the lane at the first floor level and framed by a 4m high cantilevered balcony facing towards Margaret Street. Euro also looks down the laneway and provides a rear door for entry.
Each space is created with its own character expressing materials, light and furniture in an independent way. Patrons can glide between these spaces through a series of open and private doors based upon their usage. A primary intention was to make the lighting a part of the materials of the space and not to become features in themselves. This promotes the contrast between the aged walls and the new insertions into the fabric.
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