Dining Room and Terrace and Sky Bar, Shell House

The design of Shell House has been driven by an eclectic mix of multifaceted organic tones and textures. This is no truer than in the level nine Dining Room and Terrace and Sky Bar. Bespoke furniture, vintage pieces and natural materials in neutral colours are used throughout to allude to an all-new perspective on inner-city dining. 

The venues are a canvas for artist-in-residence Mikey Freedom, whose work merges the frivolity and indulgence of past with present. More than a backdrop, Freedom’s vivid, curated art is installed on the walls, ceilings and in furniture – there’s hieroglyphic walls, mosaic tiled tables, murals, canvases and sculptures.

 The Level 9 Dining Room & Terrace levels-up Sydney inner-city dining, placing guests in Sydney’s urban scene, embracing sky plane in a manner rarely seen out of Shanghai and Hong Kong. It is a marriage between European courtyard dining with a tonally layered palette. It’s a promenade down past the open kitchen that builds up the expectation of the experience ahead and then surpasses this by opening out on the terrace, recreating relaxed Australian hospitality at sky plane.Surrounded by lushly vegetated terraces fusing European and Australian botanicals, it is a place to dine or lounge throughout the day and transforms into a magical location in the evening, nestled within surrounding buildings which seem like dramatically illuminated urban lanterns. The Dining Room is layered with intricate marble flooring, murals, stucco walls and bespoke furniture.

 Ascending the striped marble stair, the upper level of the Sky Bar offers a more impulsive and playful palette of russet tones, a bulbus timber bar and eclectic lounge furniture embracing an internal courtyard that sits under the iconic clocktower. to the half-remembered glamour Sydney, a nod to the theatricality of notorious Menzies Hotel once occupied the building. Opening in the 1960s with a performance by the Beach Boys. 

Shell House is historically monumental—it’s the only surviving palazzo-style sandstone building in Sydney clad with glazed terracotta tiles, now carefully restored to its former grandeur. Standing at 65.5 metres high, Shell house’s façade is also one of the tallest retained heritage facades in the world. This enduring commitment to quality and in turn longevity holds a place in Sydney’s past and presence. It was necessary to provide an interior with equal quality and sense of permanence. This is a fitout designed to be lovingly worn and maintained, not refurbished. The choice of marble floors and quality timber, marble and steel bars that will patina with use allows the venue to age with grace as the great bars and restaurants of Europe.