Garden State Hotel

by Technē Architecture + Interior Design

From The Architect

Opening in mid-July, Garden State Hotel will be an excellent, purpose-built four-storey bar and hospitality scene at 95 Flinders Lane. Many Melbournians will reminisce the address as the former position of iconic ’80s and ’90s hospitality place Rosati, then a ideal for the city’s social set.

The site is owned and will be controlled by Sand Hill Road, the hospitality group responsible for a chain of successful high-end pubs including Bridge Hotel, Richmond Club Hotel, Terminus Hotel and Prahran Hotel. Like the reinvention of these iconic places, Sand Hill Road has once again united with Technē Architecture + Interior Design to expose its’ most aspiring project yet, Garden State Hotel.

Technē has totally reconstructed the venue while conserving its distinctive external, itself a heritage Victorian era structure that started as a textile mill in 1896. The Technē design midpoints on a big multi-level beer garden, an astounding retreat in the heart of the CBD’s grid of laneways. Mirroring this verdant theme, the name Garden State Hotel plagiarizes Victoria’s 100 year-old state title, ‘The Garden State’.

Technē director Justin Northrop depicts the project, constructed by Schiavello Constructions, as an first-time opportunity to revive a substantial CBD place for the hospitality segment.

“Within the Melbourne CBD this is probably no other hospitality venue, based on the spirit of a pub, that offers a comparable variety of spaces and experiences under the one roof,” Northrop speaks.

The hugely aspiring 2000 square-metre project, with a volume for 840 guests, conserves much of the original textile factory’s sawtooth rooftop while opening its middle bays to shape a terraced beer garden that has the sense of a Victorian conservatory, a hidden botanical sanctuary to be discovered.

Technē is a frontrunner in the architectural design of groundbreaking new generation pubs. The studio has shaped its own vision for what these areas can be, a complete renovation of the customary constraints of the older typology. Where historically pubs were male-dominated areas, with a more singular sports and beer philosophy, today they have progressed to become a refined part of the hospitality division.

The modern architecturally designed pub is a multipurpose space, with different rooms and areas to foster diverse audiences and functions. Technē permeates these diverse areas with interesting interconnections and a feel of exploration for their visitors. While a front bar is still likely to be a vivacious community watering hole, modified dining areas and beautiful private function rooms generate opportunities where the pub now facilities the entire hospitality band, from casual get togethers to finer feasting and corporate events.

The other significant trend that Technē’s new class of pub is the return to handling hospitality venues as an addition of domestic space. With more and more urban inhabitants residing in medium and high-density dwellings, numerous people are choosing to amuse their friends in pubs. Creating areas that are warm, friendly and interesting, with exclusive architectural details and design, is a critical role in this trend of making areas that contemporary city residents can successfully use as their own living rooms.

Technē concentrates on delivering vivacious, welcoming and liveable pub architecture that meets these requirements. This happens in close discussion with its clients, and it often is accomplished with some of the minor touches that follow behind the core architectural design. Using its interior design skills Technē works together with customers such as Sand Hill Group to choose the finer features of décor and ornament, the perfecting hints that make or break a new scene as somewhere individuals want to go or not.

What Garden State Hotel has in mutual with Technē and Sand Hill Road’s earlier developments is the dynamism of its diverse internal areas. Technē’s design for Garden State Hotel connects vertically integrated areas across four levels, encouraging a feel of investigation and movement throughout the location.

As well as the multi-level beer garden at its core, the project involved the making of a street level public bar at the head of the site and a five-level structure (four of which are open to the public) at the back. The sophisticated Technē design generates a stream between areas varied in function, capacity and architectural stimulus.

The New York-inspired Garden Grill is the venue’s key dining space and also showcases the Raw Bar, serving Melbourne’s freshest seafood. The basement-level Rose Garden is a cozy cocktail bar with chandeliers, diverse antique wall décor and massive rose motifs hand-painted by native artisans. Other areas comprise the Balcony Dining Room, for small group reservations, and The Observatory on the second floor, the venue’s best functions area, which has a capacity up to 120 people in a light-filled room with outlooks onto both the garden below and the city externally.

Justin Northrop utters his firm’s founded relationship with Sand Hill Road made working on the complex project a fluid activity.

“We are able to work effortlessly with Sand Hill Road, having developed effective communication, trust and understanding over a number of years. For Garden State Hotel, together we explored planning diagrams in three dimensional models because the vertical connection between spaces is so critical to encourage patrons to move throughout the whole venue,” he articulates.

Sand Hill Road director Matt Mullins speaks they had been gazing for a CBD site for a long time and were excited to secure the Rosati location, a site he and his partners remembered tenderly. Today, the rechristened AC/DC Lane and Duckboard Place border the site, at the focus of a hospitality culture that is more lively than ever.

“In our travels, we’ve learnt that Melbourne is world-renowned for two things: its laneways and its incredible gardens. The laneway bit was covered – we’re slap-bang between four of the most famous laneways on earth. But our pocket of the CBD is seriously short of gardens. We wanted to provide a lush oasis for busy city workers and residents surrounded by the concrete jungle. Technē and builders Schiavello Constructions delivered that for us, and I have to say the results are amazing,” Mullins verbalizes.