Captain Melville | Breathe architecture

Captain Melville is the re-invention of a dark inner city nightclub into a restaurant and bar inspired by the ghosts of the hotels first patrons. Amid a colony in a state of dichotomy, 1853 saw the construction of Mac’s Hotel – one of Victoria's first licensed hotels. The order of the British settlement was unfurling across the wild Australian landscape. Settlers flooded to our shores chasing land, gold and new beginnings, while convicts railed against their injustice and the class system that created it. In the spirit of this historic, rebel narrative, the fit-out is conceptually based on the scene of mass occupation of Australia in the 1850's by immigrants chasing gold in the Australian Gold Rush. Listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, the hotel was sensitively stripped back to form an empty field ready for a new story to be told throughout. Previously boarded up skylights and windows were unbound, the masked exterior uncovered, linings and varnishes shaven. The architecture called for a repurposed aesthetic, responding to the gold rush inspired environment without creating a colonial museum or cliché. Melbourne had then grown almost over night from a tiny village into a gridded tent city. The repetition of these simple peaked forms, erected from materials on hand in the settlement (steel, timber, leather, canvas) and laid over the landscape, became the conceptual framework for the design and material palette. Divided into two main parts, the casual front bar is encased in steel and notionally operates as an apparatus panning for ‘liquid gold’, which is filtered to the patrons. The perimeter is lined with intimate seating intended for dining, whilst two large communal tables provide a place to gather around to drink and story tell. Meanwhile, the large dining hall to the rear presents itself as both an interior and exterior environmental ambidextrous space. Habitable peaked tent structures amid communal tables are arranged as a mess hall; provoking interaction between strangers while evoking an ambience reminiscent of these early tent cities, their varying silhouettes and comradeship. Mixing composition with rudimentary systems, fixed or flexible gantries hang over tables and work surfaces to illuminate them individually. Hundreds of timber sections are collected and stacked to form a robust wall and safeguard for the dining hall. A new entry penetrates the adjacent lane, initiating new activity beyond the main street and responding to the city’s partiality for discovery and hidden access. Steel mesh throughout frames displays of conversation or ingredients, reminiscent of the colonial butcher where hanging netted meats were broadcast outdoors, uncensored in plain view. Welling up from beneath the colony came the influence of the rebel spirit; here manifest in the tale of Captain Melville, the "Gentleman" Bushranger. Rousing a new layer of chaos and asymmetry this renegade sentiment permeates through the venue’s new identity, branding and raw materiality.