The Meat & Wine Co. Canberra | Restaurant Design

The Hero image of The Meat and Wine Co. Canberra was designed by Design Partnership Australia.

The Meat & Wine Co. Canberra | Design Partnership Australia

Location: 1 Constitution Avenue. Constitution Place, Ground Level, Canberra ACT 2601; Australia.

Size: 660sqm

Category: Premium Steak Dining Restaurant

Completion: 2021

Client: Seagrass Boutique Hospitality Group

Art Installation: Kent & Lane in collaboration with Design Partnership Australia

Lighting: Ark Lighting

Booth Seating: KSU Design
Build: SGB Group Australia

Project Manager: George Kyrpianou

Photography: Lightbulb Studio

Storytelling in Restaurants

All Meat & Wine stores take their inspiration from Africa, whilst staying grounded within each site’s unique Australian surroundings. Each design draws inspiration from the various cultures, traditional architecture and expressive pattern making. There is a concept widely known as the spirit of Ubuntu - giving and sharing - and this is something that we aim to embody in the each store. Meat & Wine Canberra took inspiration from the act of storytelling around a central point that is lived and filled with people, the audience.

Meat & Wine has African heritage, thus each design concept takes it inspiration from those roots where story telling through the ages formed a core part of the African legacy. Stories, made it possible for cultures to pass knowledge, history, and significant events from father to son and from one generation to the next.

What is storytelling exactly? Storytelling is not the same as reading a story. It is retelling a tale to an audience of one or many through voice, movement and expressive gestures. It creates a series of mental images associated with spoken words. It takes you on a journey. It reflects social values. It inspires you and maybe even motivates you in the pursuit of a more meaningful life. In African cultures, these shared events were used as a way for the elders to teach important life lessons, entertain and invite people to participate in a significant moment. Every successful restaurant, similarly, are spaces used to socialise, tell fascinating stories and entertain the people that come to them.

Story telling in many traditional African cultures happens at night, around a fire under the open sky and often in an enclosure. Each Meat & Wine has a different interpretation of this enclosure often referred to as a Lapa, Boma or the homestead. The envelope is surrounded by glass on 3 sides and is also reasonably congested in its footprint, the solution was to create one big central island or Boma interpretation in the middle of the space. The interpretation is formed by the inward facing bench seat that is rolled up around the entire base of the Boma. We refer to this as the “Shongololo” a Zulu word for Centipede and literally meaning “to roll up”.

The golden crown is formed by a series of individual handmade cloths by African artisans, dipped, sculptured and layered in various shades of gold, bronze, copper and sliver and metallic paints to reflect both the richness of the African soil and the abundance of minerals which comes from the land.

As humans we are drawn to being part of a bigger, dream, story and narration. Allowing us to live in a moment of time. There is a sense of African nostalgia and belonging which the golden crown and “Shongololo” as created and brought to the city. Every golden fabric piece is like a single moment, however when many singular moments are brought together, they create “tapestry”. A Tapestry that is able tell a full rich, deep story with many layers and facets along the way.

This our interpretation and our story for Meat and Wine Canberra.