Cate Young's Water Bar

Wet Your Whistle: Cate Young enlivened the three zones of Sydney`s Water Bar with gleaming elements that contrast sharply with their warehouse environment.

The refurbished Water Bar � interior design by Cate Young � is on the historic Finger Wharf in Woolloomooloo, a suburb of Sydney facing the harbour.

Young approached the project with her characteristic emphasis on the site and its surroundings. 'My work is always an attempt to access the aura or soul of a site � to find that unique present of a space or an object and to bring it to life in whatever way is appropriate to the brief and the location,' she says. In this case, Young pinpointed an element common to the history of the wharf: water. �Water provided the morphology for the interior design, one in which space, time, history and people can morph fluidly. Water flows. And a bar is a place where people, conversation and time should flow effortlessly.� With these thoughts in mind, Young created three zones � bar, lounge and caf� � placing them according to the flow of people, gearing them to the history of the space and, amazingly enough, even considering the way in which moonlight enters the interior. As she�d done earlier, in her interior design for the Exchange Hotel, Young used the heritage of the building as a tool. �For both projects,� she says, �we took an installation approach and �curated� zones within the space. Essentially, we were aiming for interaction not just between spatial zones, but also between past and present.� A major goal was to generate �a sense of history that lives on through the design�.

Words Penny Craswell
Photos Marcus Clinton
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Posted by Nils Groot