Headricks Lane: a refined restaurant/bar with an arresting interior, painstakingly distilled from a Heritage Listed building that suffered decades of unsympathetic alterations and decline. A strong, singular architectural language, inspired by the revealed beauty of the raw structure, draws together the expansive footprint into a series of intimate cohesive spaces.

The client’s ambition for Headricks Lane was bold and complex – a space that would operate 18 hours a day, and span multiple and often contrasting customer moments: a refined evening restaurant and a bright and breezy brunch destination; an intense and edgy late-night bar as well as an engaging, localised microbrewery. The brief demanded careful zoning, and the creation of spaces that could seamlessly flex in both size and shade to subtly shift the ambience as desired – from dark and intimate to bright and spacious, accommodating hundreds of guests on a pulsating Saturday evening, but still maintaining vibrancy on a quieter weeknight or afternoon.

To achieve this, SP Studio developed a strong, singular architectural language – expressed as a series of horizontal and vertical surfaces in concrete, timber and steel that collectively deliver lighting installations, zone compressions, tables and seating. This language is used cohesively to stitch together the elements of the three core spaces that comprise Headricks Lane: the Laneway (the foundation zone and heart of the restaurant); the Brewery (open until midnight), and the Longroom (a flexible space that can cater a large private function or open to seamlessly integrate with the Brewery/Bar).