About the project
Conrad Gargett was privileged to work with The University of Queensland for the design of the Patina restaurant. The elegant riverside dining destination is located at the heritage-listed Customs House in Queen Street Brisbane. Conrad Gargett crafted a distinctive design that is captivating and highlights the heritage aspects of the historic building.
“The project brief was to launch a new dining destination that was warm, modern and sophisticated. Conrad Gargett understood our vision, however developed our ideas further to take it to the next level to create Patina at Customs House. The practice crafted a distinctive design that was captivating and highlighted the heritage aspects of the historic building."
Customs House Director Brian Roberts
The idea for Patina was to express the original simplicity of the River Level spaces and add carefully orchestrated layers of new finishes. This creates a creates a warm, rich and elegant dining experience for the restaurant. These new layers are intended to be completely reversible in accordance with best conservation practice and philosophy.
The restaurant offers a series of welcoming bar seating clusters together with a rich interior dining room experience. The open outdoor river terrace dining also has expansive Story Bridge views. The outdoor dining space was reimagined with a series of banquette seats, planters and new roof awning. These are used to define edges and create a softer and human scaled outdoor dining room with the three storey customs house as a dramatic backdrop.
The internal dining room is arranged more formally with a dramatic central feature light to unify the space and add warmth and richness to the otherwise simple space. The interior palette includes muted blues, greens and gold making subtle reference to the patinated Copper dome roof over the long room.
The Patina restaurant at Customs House hosts seating for 50 patrons inside, with an additional 70 patrons on the terrace. The restaurant has crafted dining and bar menus as distinctive as the space itself, delivering the best produce our region has to offer its valued patrons.
“Aesthetically the bespoke lighting feature is a work of art and takes our guests’ breaths away. The addition of planters and banquettes has softened the terrace and created an environment that encourages leisurely dining experiences by the river. I have worked with the Conrad Gargett team including David Gole for the past 20 years and hope to work with their practice on many more projects in the future.”
Customs House Director Brian Roberts
