The Dill Pickle Club
The Dill Pickle Club mixes the delights of hi-fidelity music, sophisticated drinks and convivial company within a memorable, atmospheric space.
Design Response
Located on the first floor of a 1960’s commercial building in Launceston, the Dill Pickle Club fulfills the dream of its owners to create a bar that mixes the delights of hi-fidelity music, sophisticated drinks and convivial company within a memorable, atmospheric space.
A refurbished shell internally but tired externally, the building provided a perfectly mundane container for an interior to transport you elsewhere while surrounded by elevated views of where you are.
Our ambition was to create something akin to the ‘floating world’ from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel of the same name – an endless, enchanting moment captured within the night-time space of the local bar as the world outside evolves.
To explain their desired aesthetic our clients sent us screenshots of ‘The Queens Gambit’ to which we replied with ‘Deutschland ’83’. Our proposition being that eastern bloc modernism was able to add – to the elegance of mid-century design – an alluring mystery that the western version alone could not.
Great attention was paid to a comfortable suite of sitting, standing and circulation spaces for patrons, along with a symbiotic suite of highly functional working and storage spaces for staff. Experienced at an intimate distance, the juxtaposition of colour and material evokes the warm luxury of a jazz age speakeasy or private lounge, creating an immersive and ephemeral floating world by day or by night.Services Provided
- Full Services
Architect
Workshop Architecture
People
Project Director: Simon Whibley, William Heath
Project Team: Wanwan Darmali, James Staughton, Mijawi Mansell Whitebear
Photographer: Matt SansomDate completed
June 2024
Location
Kanamaluka Country / Launceston
Related projects
Flinders Lane
By delicately combining domestic and exhibition space, visitors to this gallery are provided with a unique, intimate experience of art.
Acheson Place, Coburg North
This project revolves around the simple but transformative act of cutting a hole in the middle of a large existing volume.
Fawkner Street House, South Yarra
Explores delicate control of circulation in curating series of visual thresholds that interact and entice occupants to transverse within spaces.
Block Hotel, Little Collins St
A 192-room hotel designed for the owners of the Block Arcade with the intention to feed off and build upon the Block Arcade brand
Gold St Renovation
A simple spatial concept unites four different uses of one small room; a cupboard, a passage, a laundry, a bathroom.
GW Crossfit Gym, South Yarra
Embodying the Crossfit ethos of strength, aerobic exercise and whole body health, this facility lifts aesthetic standard and amenity, whilst maintaining a sense of toughness.
Art Space, Casey
A fragment made from fragments: exhibiting art within libraries using on the idea of a distributed gallery, made from a kit of parts.
Come Closer: A Meeting Pavilion, RMIT
A circle around a fire remembered as a brass table top, a surface gathering the marks of all who sit there.
Bldg. Eng. Office Fitout, West Melbourne
A light filled contemporary office space for fifty staff with strong connections to the built fabric of the existing building.