Project Team

design: Anna Carosa
av: Digital Living

Anna Carosa and Stewart Koziora of the Retail Savvy Group have opened their third venue, The Shaw Davey Slum.

The Shaw Davey Slum used to be home to Pugg Mahones in Carlton.

Anna’s previous effort won her the accolade of the AHA’s “Best Themed” bar in Victoria in 2013 for her vision of “Fathers Office” in Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne CBD.

“Again, we are going to try and break the rules when it comes to design and price point whilst respecting the site and heritage that comes along with any iconic venue in Carlton. The name itself, is an honour badge to be worn proudly and pays respect to the precinct itself; a double entendre worth experiencing when we open the doors” said Anna Carosa.

The concept draws from the 1960’s era of Australian life squarely focussed on eclectic and sophisticated Melbourne life experienced after the Melbourne Olympics when life was wholesome and fun in the “golden age” of Australia’s place in the world.

The name ‘The Shaw Davey Slum’ is a play on words, based around a report on Poverty in 1958 written by two commissioners named Shaw and Davey; it was known as the windscreen survey (because they didn’t get out of their cars), with recommendations to demolish areas of Carlton they deemed to be ‘slums’.

“The Slum”, as it has been affectionately termed, is unique in style, presentation and represents great value for money.

The “Slum” is just off Lygon St with unique features such as an openable rooftop; 36 gold plated cricket stump beer taps; unique colour scheme & copper piping throughout, beer keg urinals and hand basins - everything hand-made on site by experienced tradesmen following no written instructions. There is a hand made concrete bar top embedded with 24 carat gold and silver leaf on the ground floor and seashells on the top floor

“The downstairs floor was a real issue with some sections having smelly carpet, floorboard and concrete,” said Anna. “It was all a bit of a mish-mash. We ended up pouring an extra 40mm of concrete. It was a big added expense we had not budgeted for, but it was something that had to be done. We thought we could salvage  some services, structural support and bar structure but we weren’t able to; we effectively gutted the site and removed 140 metric tonne of the 1970’s fit-out to bring the site back to pre 1890 brickwork & started form that.”

Anna had a pretty good vision in her head of exactly what she wanted the venue to look like.

“I worked with Printergy to put together some design concepts of exactly what I wanted and everyone worked off these design concepts with myself working with the team daily on-site,” she said. “We had 15 weeks inclusive of demolition to open the doors for trade & we completed on target.

”It all worked together, from the vintage pieces I found, to replica 60’s items to more modern finishes to give the look that I was going for.”

Colour wise, Anna wanted to select a colour that was very 60’s and had a few colours in mind. She went for purple and had all of the back-bar painted in a custom Porter’s paint colour she had in her head. It took quiet a few samples to get the correct colour purple. Everything was bought back to the 1890 raw brickwork and that effect maintained with Porter’s paint throughout.

The wallpapers are an integral part of the concept. In fact the venue used 400m2 of wallpapers which is 50% of the venue. Wallpapers back in the 60’s were huge and Anna wanted to select wallpapers that told a story with most of them custom made.

“For example, we have a history wall at the top of the stairs giving customers a little history lesson about the name and Carlton in the 60’s,” she added. “We also custom made a beautiful magazine wall with all 1960’s women’s magazines and put a blue/purple filer to make it a bit more retro.”

In total there are 400 Edison lights through-out the venue with a lot of time spent custom making all of the lighting. One of the main lighting features is upstairs in the roof-top bar - a custom light fixture which has 150 Edison lights above the bar.

Anna project managed the entire bill and worked with AVARI Construction Group, Concept ElecAir and Printergy Signs & Displays to execute my vision/design.

QSC

5.25 Inch, 2-way Design - in a lightweight, contemporary styled multipurpose enclosure. Magnetically Shielded LF Transducer - ideal for use near video monitors. Flexible Ball Mount Assembly Included - for convenient installation. 70V/100V Transformer Versions Available - for use with distributed audio systems.

TAG


Digital Living supplied the audio including 16x QSC AD52T speakers and QSC GX series amplifiers for the main bar. In the upstairs lounge/dance floor areas there are 2 x Funktion One F81 speakers,
2 x Funktion One MB112 Subwoofers and QSC RMX Series amplifiers. Processing is by an Allen & Heath iDr8 Matrix Mixer.