12 July 2011

The Corner House Bondi

A neglected Victorian building is transformed into a dining hotspot in beachside Bondi.

A new addition to Bondi's restaurant/bar scene, The Corner House occupies an iconic site that was once a stop for the Bondi Tram.

The revamp of this once dilapidated corner building incorporates original elements and carefully chosen new materials.

"Unfortunately most of the interior original fabric was lost in past refurbishments, but we managed to salvage the timber floors and re-instate some sort of nostalgia by using a smart selection of materials and décor," explains designer Sergio Azevedo of Studio SMA.

The area is broken into 3 areas – The Kitchen, a pizzeria which faces onto the main street; the Dining Room, a restaurant at the rear of the site, and the Living Room, a bar on the first floor.

New leather seating benches sit alongside mixed-and-matched second-hand furniture.

Steel rusted floor plates in the Dining Room and original floorboards in the Living Room are complemented by a combination of exposed and painted brick walls and off-form concrete counters finished with railway sleepers, for a vintage look that draws on the building's history.