DESIGN & BUILD: A place to call home

A place to call home

A new local on Melbourne’s Lygon Street has sprung from the bones of an old bank.

LAST YEAR, just three weeks before Victoria’s longest lockdown, a venue called Teller flung open its doors in the budding Brunswick East precinct on Lygon Street.

The venue’s red-brick heritage facade has fronted many businesses over the last century. Starting life in 1918 as the State Savings Bank of Victoria, it became a Greek restaurant, a dental practice, a record store, an apartment display suite and then a real estate agent.

Although the classic frontage has remained the same through all of its different incarnations – and remains so today, alongside its protected Canary Palm, if you venture inside these days you’ll find a multifaceted pub-style venue.

Photo credit: Jenah Piwanski

Teller is the vision of owners Melanie Aldred and Gavin van Staden who set out to create a true local for the neighbourhood. As the former owner and operator of the Metropolitan Hotel on William Street for more than 15 years, Aldred has come from a classic pub background.

“The Met was a wonderful venue with lots of regulars, but they did get on the train and go home to their local. Here in Brunswick East, you have a little pocket that has got a very strong sense of community,” Aldred says.

The pair negotiated a long-term lease with the property owners, then started with a blank canvas. Their aim was to create a welcoming extension of the lounge room, a multilayered venue for different times of day, with each space creating its own identity.

Photo credit: Jenah Piwanski

Teller’s several spaces were to include an outdoor area and function room, but no sports bar, TV or gaming area. The six-bay car park out the back would become an allweather all-purpose dining pavilion.

“I call it a fancy pub with no TVs,” Aldred says. “It’s more of a bar-dining style pub, an elevated pub, with a great food and beverage offering including cold beer and lots of it.”

The unexpected

The project was in many ways a greenfield development, according to Aldred. Town planning, which began in 2019, was a lengthy process and existing services including power needed to be upgraded to accommodate the venue they’d planned.

“It is a 300-capacity venue, which right back at the start was daunting when we went through planning,” she says.

Building began in 2020, and there were also plenty of “unforeseens”, Aldred says, especially given that the site had to be converted over from a retail space, a task made more complex due the disruption of the Covid pandemic.

The private function space upstairs has a clean and elegant design.

Photo credit: Jenah Piwanski

“We stripped it back to bare brick and built from the ground up, with no original features except the staircase.”

On the inside, any original features had been ripped out 30 years ago. “There were no cornices, architraves, ceiling roses, or timber board – anything from a beautiful period building that you’d hope to find,” she says.

“The only original features in the upstairs function space – we found some beautiful timber boards which we brought back, but everything else is pretty new.”

Structurally, one of biggest hurdles to surmount was a strong room – which is like a large safe, a leftover from the building’s days as a bank. This room was located right in the middle of the downstairs area where the kitchen is now.

“From a design perspective, that was probably the most challenging, but if we were to have kept that, we could not have

achieved what we achieved in that design, so it was well worth it in the end,” Aldred says.

By design

The venue has a classic, calming design which feels like it’s been a part of the rich fabric of that building the whole time, according to Aldred, helped along by its heritage exterior. “The building’s façade and the palm tree make it look like the venue’s been there since 1918.”

Walking through the spaces, you initially encounter an intimate front bar bistro with a combination of low seated tables, high bar seating and a pink upholstered shared booth looking out on to the street. Bifold windows open this space up on to a laneway beer garden.

Upstairs is a private function space, and beyond that is a lightfilled 80-seat dining pavilion. To the right of that is another private 20-seat dining annex accessible through bifold doors.

Teller’s front bar has a feature wall by colour smith Clare Scanlan.

Photo credit: Jenah Piwanski

Teller’s designer, architect Ewert Leaf, nailed the design and colours, according to Aldred. The design includes two feature walls by local colour smith Clare Scanlan, one in the front bar and the other in the dining pavilion.

“Chipping away at walls and finding original colours from bricks revealed blue and gorgeous dark green hues,” Aldred says. “These pieces brought out a piece of history on those walls, especially in the front bar.”

Ana Calic, lead designer at Ewert Leaf, says the design process was a collaborative one with the venue’s new owners. “Essentially, we were taking an existing building which did have beautiful heritage qualities in terms of its exterior facade, but which was internally a white office fitout.

Teller started out in 1918 as the State Savings Bank of Victoria.

“This didn’t celebrate the building or what it was, so part of the process involved taking that building and integrating it back into the streetscape and the neighbourhood again with a new purpose.

“We wanted to create somewhere where locals could goand call their second home.”

The spaces

Calic says one of the unique things about the building is that there are so many different pockets, which meant they we were able to create an individual identity for each area.

“For example, in the front bar, the moody navy aimed to celebrate the red brick of the façade rather than combat it or fight it. As we transition down to the back garden area, we’ve used lighter colours, textures and tones, with green and terracotta to create a nice atmosphere for communal dining. “We also used bold colours such as orange in areas of transition, while upstairs in the function space, it was about keeping it clean and elegant to provide the opportunity for people to inject their own personality.”

Photo credit: Jenah Piwanski

The overarching look aims to appeal to a broader demographic to suit the neighbourhood, Calic says.

“Teller is a place to celebrate, and to be a part of people’s daily rituals. It attracts quite a diverse demographic, and with this in mind, we created a design that wasn’t polarising – not too young and hip, but also not too traditional.

“Also, the design really needs to stand the test of time just as the building has. If you put something in that’s too ontrend, it will age quickly.”

One of Calic’s favourite features of Teller is the diversity of its seating. “You have these amazing love seats, or you can sit on a high seat overlooking a tree, or in a laneway in a banquette. You can go there ten times and sit in ten different environments and explore something new.”

Opening up

In August last year when Melbourne locked down, Teller squeezed in three weeks of trade before opening a takeaway offering that Aldred says garnered “amazing community support”.

Teller changed its business hours and operating model at that point, selling fish and chips and some other pub classics as well as takeaway growlers, and during busier times, operating an oyster bar and cocktail pop-up.

Before settling on seafood, Aldred scoured the neighbourhood to identify gaps in the local takeaway offerings.

“I went straight back to the managers and said we need to do a pop-up fish and chip shop and it worked.”

Since reopening as a venue, Aldred says she’s been thrilled with the response.

“The community involvement is just amazing, and guests are also travelling from nearby suburbs as there is nothing quite like Teller in the area.”