- Year: 2010
Text description provided by the architects. The design of South Yarra’s vibrant new Yarra Lane Precinct has seen HASSELL win a 2011 Melbourne Design Award. The team won the Interior Design, Hospitality award for their work on the precinct and its three exciting new dining venues: Outpost Dining Room, Mopho Noodle Bar and Deba Sushi Bar. Developer Michael Yates wanted the laneway, which runs off Melbourne’s lively Chapel Street, to be characterized by a diverse mix of individual shops – a village high street – that encouraged street activation and vibrancy.
With this in mind, our designers created a unique identity for the precinct and each of its new restaurants. In all three instances, the shop fronts are designed to reflect the nature of the dining character inside. They not only hint at the interior experience but also open out, allowing food collaboration to spill into this exciting new commercial precinct.
MoPho Noodle Bar
Mopho Noodle was designed to respond to Executive Chef Benjamin Cooper’s pan-Asian culinary style. Elements of a hawker’s bazaar are evident at Mopho, which features an exposed dry store and an array of shelves, hangers and pendant lights dappled throughout. The dry store lined walls are screened by a collection of custom patterned bamboo panels, referencing the various regional influences on Cooper’s food. The stitched fabric ceiling, hung loosely, evokes a canopy, depicting abstract images of cheeky Shanghai models from the 1950s. Mopho Noodle is a balance of bold complexities, adhering to a philosophy that creates a powerful dining experience.
Outpost Dinning Room
Outpost Dining Room is an unabashed celebration of the food experience driven by the chef and owner’s desire to serve fresh ingredients in a simple way.
Designed with a simple aesthetic in mind and leveraging off the neighbouring original Outpost cafe, the restaurant offers authentic, home-style dishes as a communal dining experience.
An expressive use of materials and detailing establish a character reflective of the broader food experience – simple ingredients handled with care. An old timber shopfront and exposed service areas express some of the details that reflect the ‘nothing to hide’ philosophy of the industrial era. Limed timbers, tessellated tiling and hand crafted seating suggest that the warmth of a lingering communal food experience is as important as the food itself.
Deba Sushi Bar
Deba is a sushi bar, located at the entry of lively Yarra Lane, South Yarra. Shielded by heavy white cyprus battens, the space is quiet and contemplative. The use of gloss white tiling edged in timber emulates the cleanliness of a Japanese bath house, while the Koi fish mosaic and noren curtains evoke the serenity of a Japanese tea garden. Deba, derived from the Japanese carving knife, Deba bocho, is designed for strength and precision. Like exquisitely executed sashimi, Deba is intricate, intimate and crafted beautifully.
Text provided by Hassell
