Year: 2024
Client: Neil Perry
with ACME
The studio was again asked by renowned Australian Chef and long-time client Neil Perry to design Song Bird, his Cantonese restaurant in Double Bay, opened in 2024. As with Margaret, leading Australian architecture and interior design firm ACME collaborated on the realisation of the project. Together the teams spent more than two years crafting the space within the heritage-listed Gaden House, a 1968 building by Neville Gruzman, one of Sydney's most significant modernist architects.
The brief was to celebrate the chef's career-long love of Cantonese cuisine and his commitment to the finest Australian produce, delivered at considerable scale: 240 seats across three levels, including two private dining rooms.
The concept balanced preservation of the building's original character with a materiality evoking the spice, heat and complexity of the cuisine. Marble and granite, delicate green and gold details, and a bespoke fluted timber panel system washed in a deep red stain create a space that is at once restrained and rich, anchored by the building's original spiral staircase.
Separate from the architecture, Caon Design Office designed and produced much of the decorative lighting, while branding was developed by sister firm Actuel Studio.
Photography by Lillie Thompson