Pretty much anyone who walks into a bar or diner in a group is scanning for a booth. It’s just nicer to eat five plates of cheese fries in your own space. And the architects at Australian firm Techne clearly agree because they used concrete pipes to create seating spaces in the redesigned bar at Melbourne’s Prahran Hotel. Finally some privacy.
The large pipes allow the structure of the building to simultaneously provide internal spaces, perfect for individual tables. As part of a design overhaul, the hotel demolished its previous extension from the 1970s and replaced it with two-stories-worth of concrete pipes, seventeen in all. The design lets in a lot of light and a central courtyard creates flow to outside spaces. Concrete pipes sound like a kind of oppressive leisure environment at first, but between the wood panelling, leather banquettes and gently sloped walls the ambience is probably pretty great. [My Modern Met]
Photos from The Prahran Hotel