20 October 2009

Victor Churchill

Vegetarians beware... this is the story of a lot of meat.

What Australian child can't recall trips to the local butcher; the white tiled walls, fluorescent lights, stainless steel and, of course, the lovely fake green parsley - memories perhaps best left in the past.

Well... Dreamtime Australia has turned the idea of butchery on its head with the new Victor Churchill, in Sydney's Woollahra.

If it weren't for the cuts of meat hanging in the front window display you'd be forgiven for thinking Victor Churchill was a high-end jewellery store. However, Victor Churchill is all about the meat and the art of butchery. On the site of the old Churchill Butchers, the new ‘store' weaves historical elements with modern finishes and state-of-the-art technologies.'¨

"The brief was to create a truly unique butcher shop that successfully blended a traditional European butcher shop in look and feel, with modern, cutting-edge design elements that had the potential to re-define the category, not only in Australia but world-wide," says Dreamtime Australia Design's Director Michael McCann.

From the exposed sandstone wall to the restored Berkel floor-standing slicer, the fit-out has clear historical references and then there are more modern elements, such as the meat hanging room - with custom-designed cog gear and metal chain rack - where meats are cured, infused by the Himalayan rock salt brick wall.

Core to the project was moving away from the ‘meat out the back' tradition of butchery, bringing the butchers and meat to the front-of-house. The butchers work in the shop behind floor-to-ceiling glass in a coolroom, working at timber butcher's blocks.

However, this fit-out cleverly avoids pretentiousness, with ingenious touches such as the video surveillance display where a particular meat is displayed with a number of CCT cameras trained on it (not sure if they're expecting it to escape) - inspired by a recent Louis Vuitton display.

Victor Churchill is definitely worth a visit, for design and meat lovers alike.