This newly-designed café in Brunswick, Melbourne celebrates its neighbourhood’s industrial roots while also working in a contemporary context.
For fear of stating the obvious, good cafés aren’t hard to come by in Melbourne. Victoria’s capital has long been a world leader in the coffee scene and those after a decent flat white don’t have to search for long before finding one. With this badge of honour, though, comes more pressure on owners to offer up cool, comfortable and most importantly, original venues to pique the interest of spoilt-for-choice Melbournites.
This was just the challenge posed to architecture firm Splinter Society when they were approached to design a café, Project 281 in an old warehouse building in Melbourne’s Brunswick. The clients wanted a café that felt uniquely local; somewhere that responded to the history of the site and the neighbourhood’s industrial roots, but also worked in a contemporary context.
“The warehouse was a printing factory, and connected to a heritage Victorian terrace which housed the printing offices,” explains Chris Stanley, architect and director of Splinter Society. “We wanted to work with the textures and fabric that had been created through the previous printing processes and usage. This included scars in the floor where pads had been poured to support the machines, cut-outs in the brickwork of the old heritage building, and [the] exposed steel structure that supported machinery and the factory shell itself.”
The raw and unrefined materials selected to update the site remain typical of what one might find in a warehouse. Steel and concrete were used liberally, from the feature lighting fashioned from offcuts of rebar steel to the mighty custom-poured concrete service counters. In fact, many of the materials used in the renovations were sourced in the warehouse itself, and later upcycled. This approach meant that almost no demolition or landfill was required on the job.
The expansive footprint of the warehouse was broken down into more intimate spaces by the statement stacked cast concrete forms, which double as plant pots. Project 281 boasts a coffee roastery, yoga space, kitchen garden and a large kitchen, prep and storage area.
The hard raw materials are tempered by the array of indoor plants and garden beds, designed to grow and develop naturally over time. “The building was designed to live and breath,” Chris says. “Additional skylights were put in to allow the significant indoor plants and garden beds to grow. Over time these will start to take over and feel like a greenhouse.”
In a city inundated with cafés, Project 281 stands out as an unfussy, honest, and welcoming ode to a neighbourhood that’s central to Melbourne’s story. This – coupled with the promise of exceptional coffee and meals, of course – will entice locals to the venue for years to come.
You may also like the Java+ café by Iksoi Design Studio.
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
Bidding farewell to mundane and uninspired office spaces, colour has transformed our workplaces into layered and engaging environments. So we sit down with Karina Simpson, Hot Black’s Workplace Lead, to talk about the influence colour has on the workspace landscape through the prism of Herman Miller’s progressive colour philosophy.
The workplace has changed – and it will continue to evolve. With dynamism at the heart of clients’ requirements, architects and designers at leading practices such as Elenberg Fraser are using and recommending Herman Miller’s OE1 products for the future workplace.
How does Domenic Alvaro oversee a project from start to finish? Timothy Alouani-Roby met with the Woods Bagot director and global design leader to find out why editors make the best architects and architects the best editors.
Hospitality experts Hogg and Lamb has done it again. With generous and playful ceiling heights alongside fine materials, the Sound Garden awaits.
That’s it. It’s a no-brainer. Move to central Melbourne and rent at LIV Munro where the apartments are beautifully conceived and the amenities are beyond outstanding. Build-to-rent is making waves and, through excellent design, the lifestyle of this new way of living is elevated to another dimension.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
To mark 40 years of design excellence, founder and CEO Nerio Alessandri recently came to Sydney. We spoke to the Italian design icon at a bustling event at Technogym’s Ruschutters Bay showroom.
The workplace has changed – and it will continue to evolve. With dynamism at the heart of clients’ requirements, architects and designers at leading practices such as Elenberg Fraser are using and recommending Herman Miller’s OE1 products for the future workplace.
How does Domenic Alvaro oversee a project from start to finish? Timothy Alouani-Roby met with the Woods Bagot director and global design leader to find out why editors make the best architects and architects the best editors.
We have all felt it and continue to experience the ramifications of change. It’s in the air and workplace design is at the vanguard of creating new approaches to working. Design leads the way at the 2023 INDE.Awards as the spotlight shines on The Work Space category and a partner who has recently made a historic change on a global scale.