North Food and Wine

Cairns, Queensland

Brief and Context

A new client took possession of the Shangri La’s lounge bar and adjoining restaurant in late December 2008.The lounge bar, called Ba’ 8, was one of Cairns’ most notable and stylish venues. The adjoining restaurant however, formerly called Tides, did not have the same success. Our brief was to investigate why the lounge bar was so successful, while the restaurant was not, and to provide an architectural solution. We were to transform the restaurant with a very modest budget, in a tight time frame and give back a restaurant space capable of becoming one of Cairns’ best dining experiences.

Design Approach

There were two critical aspects to our design approach. The first was that we needed to understand how the restaurant worked and how the different demographics between the lounge bar and restaurant would mesh. Getting this right would be the success of the design.
The second design aspect critical to this project was knowing that our construction time on site was extremely short, having a window of only 4 days. This meant that, as architects, we needed to anticipate and solve problems in advance, rather than passing them on to the builder to figure out on site.
We decided that the space had multiple, and at times, conflicting uses. For example, the morning buffet equipment was contrary to what a fine dining experience was. Our approach was to use a floor to ceiling curtain that could be moved to open and close spaces, to create texture and drama in one place.
To provide us a good chance of meeting our timeline on site, we elected to use several isolated design elements that could (a) be built off site and (b) not prevent other elements of the project from being finished should complications occur. This included the curtain mentioned above, several custom printed canvas art panels, 5 large feature lights, a new display wine room, new furniture and rebranding of the restaurant to North Food and Wine.
Building Approach

Our client put a lot of trust in the decisions that we made on this project. This allowed us to use a construction method that other clients may not understand or be brave enough to use. Rather than tender the project and contractually sign up a builder to a fixed price, we choose to employ a construction manager on a fixed fee and have the client pay all construction bills directly.
This meant that the building risk was moved from the builder to the client, but it meant that the construction process was now transparent and ensured that we were all on the same team. This only worked because of the extremely competent and trustworthy project manager that we used. The advantages were that we saved 4 weeks usually spent on tendering, we had early access to the construction manager and sub-contractors, large cost savings because materials and labour were real costs rather than prices based on builders risk, we were able to choose the best sub consultants – not just the cheapest – and we were able to get on with the job and solve issues on site rather than play the variations game.

Design Team & Builder

Mango team: James Maude, Nic Granleese, Barry Bradbrook, Liam Froggatt, Melanie Jackson
Construction manager: Peter Gaudron
Mechanical engineer: Lincolne Scott