Bondi Pavilion Glory Days

Conceived in a lockdown as a love letter to lazy summer days, Glory Days is Bondi’s answer to the nostalgic European holidays Australians adore.

The brief – ‘not another tourist café,’ but rather a space that expresses the duality of the city beach lifestyle that is Sydney and culminates in Bondi.

The interiors seek to connect Sydney with the world – paying homage to Jorn Utzon’s pink stone summer house in Mallorca.

Arched heritage windows are a constant reminder of the character of the Pavilion, where sunlight streams through and dances across the gloss and matte textures. Candid holiday vignettes taken ‘en vacances’ by Australian fashion photographer Adrian Mesko create a layer of domesticity and intimacy.

The exterior terrace is furnished with sandy stone tables, teak, and linen chairs, is a setting for sunrises, hazy summer afternoons and slow sunsets.

The enviable task for a project like this is in the search for a balance between respect for a building and the creation of a space that’s ‘of its contemporary place’; somewhere locals want to be. And there’s little doubt that this balance had been lost in previous iterations of the Pavilion. There’s an inevitable aspect of subjectivity in any creative balancing act but with skill and sensitivity we sought to walk the line between respect and nostalgia, pastiche and homage and between accessibility and exclusivity.

When reviewing this work in both macro and micro, we’re pleased to have manifested both subtle and deliberate interventions that express a coherent whole, one that evokes past glory but only to set the scene for a singularly modern Bondi experience.

The high-profile restoration of the Bondi Pavilion saw its heritage significance reinstated and has followed the shift in Bondi from catering for tourism to delighting the primarily white-collar demographic.

“The Bondi Pavilion is truly an iconic building and we’re excited to be opening our doors here with a design that is both fresh and respectful of this incredible heritage building. We’re saying every day is a vacation,” says Glory Days Owner, Aaron Crinis.