Brutalist yet homely, that’s just how interior design studio Fiona Lynch Office envisioned St Ali & The Queen, a newly opened hospitality concept within the Munro Site community hub, part of Melbourne’s revitalised Queen Victoria Market. This all-day local providore and café – also a cocktail bar by night – is the result of the collaboration between artisanal coffee roaster St Ali and award-winning mixologist Orlando Marzo.
St Ali & The Queen by Fiona Lynch Office
Many storied cultural influences envelop St Ali & The Queen – the market and food hall’s heritage and vibrant sense of community, Melbourne’s modern edge and passionate coffee culture, the feeling of warm European hospitality and the client’s Italian roots among them. Taking a cue from these, the space features an inviting deli, a coffee window for takeaways, a sociable counter bar, relaxed café seating indoors, and tables spilling outside to the pavement.
The design elements that make up the space, which embrace flow for staff and diverse guest encounters, consist primarily of polished raw materials and detailed joinery. ‘We wanted to embrace the traditional food hall’s classic design language of box aluminium stalls and channel its raw, brutalist feel into our design while also creating a space that cultivates the spirit and warmth of European hospitality,’ shares Fiona Lynch.
Complementing the interior’s soaring arched industrial windows and exposed concrete floors by Six Degrees Architects are raw wood, stone and brass. The furniture was custom-designed by Lynch and crafted by Geelong-based Ross Thompson using sustainable Oregon timber, as seen across the face of the bar and for high-top tables, sofas, bar stools and portable low stools.
This tactility and inviting sense of community are further carried out throughout the open plan via European-style leather-upholstered benches overlooking the market and the feature lighting, such as the counter lamps designed by Fiona Lynch and made by Melbourne’s Volker Haug, and a wall lamp by Milanese architect Paolo Rizzatto for Flos.
Italian marble and blocks of travertine and Afrodite stone on the counter, along with honeyed wood shades, add sophistication to the bar and help transition the space from a modern coffee shop by day to a sleek neighbourhood bar by night.
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