This issue features restaurants, a pub, a winery, retail stores and a racing marquee. Each shares a common sentiment – they embrace leisure. In a time when we’re encouraged to work hard but slow down, make five-year plans but live in the moment, these leisure spaces are a refuge and meeting place for like-minded pleasure seekers. In their varied forms – sometimes cavernous, layered volumes intended for exploration and excitement, and other times peaceful and private corners to calm us and compose us – they offer delight and distraction from daily problems and pressures; it’s design therapy, in a way.
The issue also includes a look at Ligne Roset furniture exhibition Living It Large In Small Spaces, a profile on emerging Sydney practice Amber Road and an essay on the business of design by Moooi co-founder and CEO Casper Vissers.
Hospitality
The Terminus Hotel: Frequent collaborators Techné Architecture and Interior Design and Sand Hill Road have joined forces once more to breathe new life into this Melbourne pub.
Polperro Winery: Nestled in a forested gully on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, this restaurant and winery designed by Hecker Guthrie expresses a deep appreciation of quality and craft.
Frank Restaurant & Bar: Unapologetic and not too serious: Frank Restaurant and Bar, designed by Georgina Freeman Design, is the new kid in Hobart.
The Charming Squire: Designed by Collins and Turner in collaboration with Baber Studio and D’Occhio, this brewhouse in South Brisbane tells the story of convict-turned-brewer James Squire through its base design and material palette.
Education
Charles Perkins Centre: At The University of Sydney’s Camperdown/Darlington Campus, this education and research facility by FJMT and Building Studio is a “poetic” spatial experience.
Workplace
Kennards Self Storage: In northern Sydney, SJB Interiors has created a new working environment for this storage company – a series of spaces that reflects the communal and relaxed ethos of the family-owned business.
Temporary
Lexus Design Pavilion: For three days during the Melbourne Cup Carnival at Flemington Racecourse, the Lexus Design Pavilion by Mim Design was a sought-after setting to knock back a few champagnes and get lost in the magic.
Retail
Optiko: In a historic Brisbane shopping arcade, Stephen Cameron Architecture has designed an optical store that resembles a cabinet of curiosities and complements the rare and distinctive eyewear on offer.
Prahran Grocer: Newly minted design studio We Are Huntly has played on the traditional 1950s grocer to make Prahran Grocer in Melbourne a truly pleasant place to do the shopping.
– Cassie Hansen, editor, Artichoke
