Completed in 2021, Meat & Wine Co Adelaide is a 160-seater restaurant based in the heart of the CBD in the heritage-listed Elder House, designed by Walter Baggot in 1937. The restaurant’s interior design by Design Partnership Australia draws inspiration from Indigenous African lifestyle with materiality referenced from the tradition of Indigenous rope making. It is shortlisted for The Restaurant & Bar Design Awards, with the virtual award ceremony taking place on October 14, 2021.

All Meat & Wine Co stores traditionally take their inspiration from Africa, whilst staying grounded within each site’s unique Australian surroundings. They draw reference from various cultures, traditional architecture and pattern making, the romance, and the nostalgia.
To this end, each store has its own interpretation of a ‘Boma,’ a term used to describe an enclosure for the safety of people and livestock. It’s also a place for storytelling and the coming together of people at night. At The Meat & Wine Co, the Bomas are all private or semi-private dining rooms or areas where larger groups can gather. They are interpreted differently for every Meat & Wine Co store.

When approaching the interior design concept, the team at Design Partnership Australia was acutely aware that Indigenous Australians were amongst the first humans to migrate out of Africa to the shores of Australia some 65,000 years ago and wanted some tether between the two.

“We thus found inspiration and connection between the Indigenous nations in the art of traditional rope making. We chose hand-woven rope as a medium to frame, divide and anchor all the spaces within the restaurant and as a medium to construct the ‘Boma’s’,” explains Roberto Zambri, Senior Associate at DPA. All the ropework installations were conceptualised and developed by the creative team headed up by Callie van der Merwe, Roberto Zambri, and Calvin Janse Van Vuuren, here in Australia.

We worked very closely with and guided Kent & Lane from South Africa to conclude both the development and the final execution and fabrication of the macramé components and turned large bar log tabled from Pretoria South Africa.

The team went to great lengths to curate a multitude of spaces that each represent different experiences to different people across different parts of the day. “As the store has a very limited shopfront, without much natural daylight, we made the conscious decision to turn this into an advantage by curating spaces where surprise and delight will transport the patrons to a rich tapestry of African-inspired interior architecture,” says
Calvin Janse van Vuuren, Senior Associate at DPA.

In traditional cultures, shared events were used to teach important life lessons, entertain and capture history. Every successful restaurant, similarly, are conducive spaces used to socialise, tell fascinating stories and entertain the people that come to them.” – Callie van der Merwe.

“It is always great to work in these heritage structures as they have a patina and sense of history and tactility not found in modern structures. As humans, we are drawn to them because they are irreplaceable and unique. There is a sense of nostalgia and belonging in a space touch by time and a rich tapestry of real stories. They all represent different challenges, but they also all seem to bring out the best in us when we search for the solutions
that would be most befitting and respectful.”