Client
Tim & Kim Berwick
Location
Lambton, Newcastle
Project
Design & Construct
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Âpé, which is ancient Ainu Japanese for fire, is a design predicated around the base, constituent elements, that are carbon neutral or negative, set within a glowing sodium orange setting, a nod to the heart of a traditional Ainu Japanese home, the hearth, and the glow of sodium lights along the harbour of Newcastle.
Client:
Taiyo Namba
Year:
2022
Status:
Complete
Team:
Benjamin Berwick, Joshua Healey.
Collaborators:
Scope Commercial Construction (Builder), Chapman Upholstery (Upholsterer), Marline (Mechanical Engineer), Spectrum Acoustics (Acoustic Engineer), Domus Vim (Signage), Jan Vranovsky (Photography)
Providing carbon-neutral authenticity to a standardised, early 2000’s tenancy shell.
Our specification for the project became a funding mechanism to support early-stage, innovative material fabricators creating carbon-negative materials. The wealth of the project was channeled into companies developing or supplying materials that exist as part of bioremediation, carbon sequestration, and/or the circular economy.
A Yakitori Bar crafted from mycelium grown on agro-industrial by-product and waste material, cellulose fibre extracted from waste pineapple leaves, rubberwood, carbon neutral stone made from the dust & existing autoclaved aerated concrete.
These very base element materials, from mycelium to cellulose fibre, sit proud in a shell that exposes the tenancies of the past. Wires, pipes, paint, and services remain exposed, to not only show the inner workings of technical space and tenancies adjacent, but also to reinforce siting within what was once a very industrial city. This also mitigates the unsustainable, sterile approach of utilising material to cover and hide.
Like fire being the catalysing element between ingredient and meal, we exaggerate the proportion of the tenancy shell with primary forms that glow, which encompass and synthesize all elements within the space. Where ingredient becomes meal becomes sustenance, it is our aim that Âpé's design provides a cohesive, authentic space that highlights the importance of material carbon neutrality, teachings of sustainability from our ancestors many times removed, and overarchingly, a positive experience for inhabitation.
Ape Yakitori Bar
