Gertrude Street

A bar on Gertrude Street that needed to feel as though it had been there for forty years. This is the brief for half the bars built in Melbourne in the last decade, and most of them fail because they solve it with objects — vintage light fittings, reclaimed timber, taxidermy — rather than with material decisions. Age in a room comes from surfaces, not from things placed in front of them.

The Verde Alpi marble was the first decision and it governed everything else. A deep green marble with white veining has a particular quality in low light: it absorbs and does not reflect. The bar top and back wall cladding in this stone gives the room a density that takes fifteen minutes to read rather than thirty seconds. Smoked mirror panels behind the bar multiply depth without multiplying light, which is the difficult trick in a narrow room. The leather banquette seating was specified full-grain and aniline-dyed, which means it will develop a patina with the specific pattern of use: lighter at the seat front, darker along the back. In two years it will look as though it absorbed the room rather than being placed in it.

The gunmetal fixtures — hardware, shelving brackets, footrail — were custom fabricated and PVD coated. The coating prevents rusting while the finish continues to develop a surface texture over time. Nothing in this room was purchased ready-made except the glassware. The budget was not large and the constraint produced better decisions than the alternative would have.