Burly Bar
The organic forms and frosted finish of Burly Gin’s iconic glass bottles formed the conceptual starting point for Burly Bar, the brand’s flagship tasting room and bar on the Gold Coast, the work of Studio Plenty.
Burly Bar is located within The Warehouses in Currumbin, a distinctive J.AR Office-designed semi-industrial urban hub. As the only late-night establishment in the precinct, the bar emits an inviting amber glow from the street, with its preserved timber sawtooth roof casting a dramatic form over its dual levels.
Lit in caramel tones, the ground floor is designed for casual groupings, featuring a long bench dotted with padded stools and drink tables. The mezzanine level, meanwhile, invites more intimate conversation with its booth seating and moody red palette. The hero of the design is its key material ingredient: epoxy resin, which is used for the bar and round tables to create a smooth, lozenge-like finish reminiscent of Burly Gin’s bottles. The bar and tables’ translucency also accentuates the golden ambience of the lighting.
Creating these resin features involved precise workmanship and an element of bravery. “Using formwork, the resin is poured, cured and sanded onsite – the bar top itself was poured in place as one slab,” says Studio Plenty’s Will Rathgeber. “Resin is extremely unforgiving and temperamental – it requires experimentation, immense patience and respect. Pouring onsite means the resin is curing in a suboptimal environment, hence it requires great care and surveillance.”
The result is a sleek, highly touchable bar. Along with the high shine and warmth of an adjacent copper gin still, it creates a central visual feature, with a backlit bottle display framing the bar zone overhead. A further wall of backlit Burly bottles brings a pop of ambient orange and green, while mosaic wall tiles and umber-toned floor tiles tread the line between high shine and understated modesty, which fits the aesthetic of the building as a whole.
“The Warehouses precinct is a sublime example of industrial revitalisation – a masterclass of control and composition,” says Rathgeber. “Burly Bar is designed with the intention of folding back the edges to allow the fabric of The Warehouses to bleed through the interiors.”
Burly Gin provided a concise brief to Studio Plenty, asking for little more than an intimate space that responded to the tone of its industrial setting, and one that would act as an apt hospitality debut for the young brand. With Burly Bar, this has been delivered to a high degree, with comfort and tactility that is immediately inviting.
The studio recently won the Emerging Interior Design Practice Award at the 2025 Australian Interior Design Awards, where the bar was also shortlisted in the Hospitality Design Award. Additionally, Burly Bar received a well-deserved commendation in the 2025 Dulux Colour Awards.
Interior design by Studio Plenty. Build by Glenn Warren Projects. Lighting by Adrian Pizzey. Furniture manufacturing by Atelier.
