Project Team
design: Lion and the Leek
av: Illarwarra Production Services
music: Nightlife
Suppliers
lighting: Zaffero, Fenton and Fenton, Café Culture + Insitu
furniture: Bseated Global, Zaffero, Zenith Interiors, Vovoom Emporium
Mr Crown is an exciting new luxurious restaurant & bar venue that’s recently launched in the heart of Wollongong, revamping the previous occupant – Glasshouse.
Designer Yeedah Campagnaro-Thomas aimed for an ambience that is causual sophistication plus modern industrial with a masculine edge.
Unique features of the site include eight metre high ceilings and a thirty metre long concaved entry wall. There were load bearing issues in regards to there being an under ground car park.
The client was the project manager, so Yeedah had to work in with their scheduling.
Yeedah chose materials to denote a masculine vibe such as Leather, Steel, Copper, Brass, Concrete and studs.She envisaged Mr Crown being a well-travelled, modern stylish man. This was his place.
Colours are turquoise, green, black and white. White in some areas as its east facing and the natural light isn’t in the space for long. Black stained timbers to the bar area for sophistication. Dark turquoise colours in the lounge area to give it a more glamorous vibe with materials being timber, brass, steel, studs, and concrete.
The chevron and stripes, the use of black and white in the interior and exterior like a classic tuxedo, ties the concept together.
Yeedah states that lighting is everything. Because of the size of the venue she used many different types of lights to create warmth, ambience and mood, even custom making some of them.
Special features incorporated into the project include a custom built steel bar front with studs, copper bar top, six metre high-recycled timber custom built screen, custom lighting, custom made furniture, hand painted pattern on ceilings, artworks, custom wallpaper, statue of Apollo in blue, to name a few.
The venue is open early and closes very late, so the interior had to suit a place to dine at and a bar to hang out in. It covers pre work coffee to late night cocktails.
The brief for Illawarra Production Services required retention of existing equipment where appropriate. The bar uses six wall mounted EV Zx1 loudspeakers and a soffit mounted Turbosound TXD 215. The lounge uses two EV Zx1 and a Turbosound TXD 118.
These are driven by 2 x EV Q66 and a Q99 respectively, processing via two dbX Driveracks. The courtyard being a new area exposed to the elements uses 4 x Bose DS100S speakers driven by a Bose DXA2120 configurable amplifier. A Panasonic PT-VW430EA in a custom-built, temperature controlled stainless steel housing projects onto a feature wall behind the courtyard bar.
Patch points have been installed throughout the venue for a mobile DJ station featuring Pioneer Nexus decks and a DJM800 mixer. Control is via staff friendly Digipage wall-plates. These are essential as the venue trades day and night allowing remote source and volume control of the DJ, Nightlife PC’s or TV/playback audio. In the case of Nightlife, program selection is done remotely via the Nightlife app on smartphones and overall vision switching is done with an Extron AV 8 x 8 Matrix Switcher via a remote panel.