An unused retail space and storage rooms at St Kilda’s Prince Hotel have been reimagined as Little Prince Wine, a contemporary wine store and small bar that makes a charming extension to the hotel’s offering.
Echoing our approach to the new designs for the Prince Dining Room and Prince Public Bar, we’ve created a new retail and hospitality venue that’s undoubtedly modern, yet redolent of the old hotel’s history and character.
We opened up the available space as much as structural engineering would allow, providing greater amenity and creating connections, both internally and with other parts of the hotel. Furniture and fittings were introduced in a style consistent with the neighbouring Public Bar.
2020
St Kilda, Boonwurrung Land
40 pax
150m²
Working in this historic hotel presented challenges but also opportunities. The contrast between our contemporary insertions and the rustic existing building fabric makes for an interior environment that feels fresh and unique.
The material palette at Little Prince Wine is robust and utilitarian, and includes galvanised steel, natural Australian hardwoods, glossy green wall tiles and even fibreglass. The application of these materials is highly refined, and they provide a pleasing juxtaposition with other elements, such as the terracotta formwork ceilings and concrete beams, that have been left raw and unfinished.
The fibreglass was used to fabricate a sculptural custom “ice bucket” for holding bottles of white and sparkling wines sold by the glass. Nearby, a custom steel table displays a similarly curved, organic outline.
Rather than being designed as a discrete retail and hospitality venue, Little Prince Wine is imbued with a sense of connection to other parts of the hotel. Signage and site-lines, including one carefully framed view through a window into the Public Bar and out to Fitzroy Street, are always hinting at something beyond.
Beneath the main space, an old cellar provides an additional dining area and an extension to the retail offering. It’s been updated with a waiter station and another custom steel table, while the existing bottle storage racks and timber floor have been retained and restored.
Carefully choreographed lighting ensures that the mood here is darkly dramatic, marking this subterranean vault as a rather special place to seek out fine wine.
With the sophisticated, European-feeling Little Prince Wine now providing a more intimate drinking and dining experience than the beautiful Public Bar next door, locals to this part of St Kilda really are spoilt for choice.
Winner
Best Retail Design
A retail space inside a bar or cafe is often a lesson in awkward trade-offs, but not at Little Prince Wine. Here, underneath the Prince Hotel in St Kilda, a counter selling cheese, cold cuts, wine and dry goods sits comfortably within an intimate bar, the two functions of the venue complementing each other and making the overall space richer. Standout features include zinc countertops, an eye-catching counter fridge and illuminated metal shelving, but it’s a striking green-tiled back wall that delineates the retail from the rest of the venue and draws in takeaway customers. Still, this relatively small venue encourages exploration of its line of drink fridges and timber wine shelves, and a cellar tucked down a second staircase. “Very often you compromise putting retail in a restaurant space,” said one juror. “But for these elements to work together and make each other richer, I think is pretty extraordinary.”
Winner
Best Bar Design
There’s an inevitability to Little Prince Wine, where it’s difficult to imagine this space being designed any differently. Slotted beneath St Kilda’s iconic Prince Hotel off Acland Street, this intimate wine bar effortlessly blends the old and the new. It’s in the detail – the fibreglass champagne tub that greets guests upon arrival, the mirrored specials board, the Art Deco-inspired light fittings – but also the easy blend of beautiful curves with striking textures such as dark tiles, handsome vertical timber panelling and exposed concrete beams. The seamless incorporation of a retail element underlines the harmony of the space, but it’s Little Prince’s capacity to encourage punters to dwell that registered with the jury: the easy transition from natural to artificial light, the interplay between soft and hard textures, the clever sight lines, and the sense of discovery from one space to the next. A clear standout in the bar category.
Photography: Sharyn Cairns
Branding: Susu Studio
Project Manager: SCR Construction
Contractor: CRC Construction