{"id":750956,"date":"2026-06-21T14:10:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T14:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/750956\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T14:10:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T14:10:43","slug":"in-conversation-with-jared-webb-architect-behind-marlowe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/750956\/","title":{"rendered":"In conversation with Jared Webb, architect behind Marlowe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occupying a heritage-listed Art Deco apartment block in Brisbane, Marlowe restaurant retains its original domestic layout \u2013 22 former rooms connected by a shared stairwell, each repurposed into intimate dining spaces, wine rooms and bars.<\/p>\n

Rather than erase these constraints, J.AR Office embraced them, allowing the architecture to shape both the guest experience and the restaurant\u2019s operation. The result is richly layered, and feels like being welcomed into a grand, eccentric home, where heritage, hospitality and nostalgia are woven into every room. It\u2019s a celebration of Brisbane\u2019s architectural heritage, which is rare in itself in Brisbane.<\/p>\n

Here, we chat with Jared Webb of J.AR Office about the makings of Marlowe.<\/p>\n

\"Marlowe<\/p>\n

View gallery<\/p>\n

Cassie Hansen: Marlowe was originally intended as the Fanda Group\u2019s first venue. But it ended up being the fourth, and fourth by you. How did that extended timeline shape what Marlowe actually became?<\/p>\n

Jared Webb: So, Marlowe was the first project that we worked on with [Fanda Group], and due to delays with the heritage building upgrades \u2013 converting it from an apartment to a commercial building with this significant size venue \u2013 was a bigger task than anticipated. So we actually slid in Central, Norte and Sueno in the time we were waiting; they were considered infill projects until Marlowe was ready to start construction. So, that\u2019s quite funny in itself. But it was actually great going back to what was originally designed, revisiting it nine to 12 months later. There were very minor tweaks around operational efficiency and whatnot which were adopted, but the design intent was so strong, and the client loved the direction, there were no major tweaks. It was more about what materials were still available and things like that. There were also some lessons learned from some of the other venues that we were able to integrate.<\/p>\n

CH: The building was originally named the Merivale Flats, constructed in 1938. What was your approach in designing a venue with 14 rooms and multiple circulation paths while keeping it cohesive?<\/p>\n

JW: Honestly, my brain was melting in the early days of planning this restaurant, there was a heap of limitations around egress and fire compartments. We weren\u2019t able to demolish many walls, so we really did have to inherit the footprint of the four existing apartments spread across two levels and convert that into a single restaurant.<\/p>\n

The parallels we drew upon were looking at the era of the building, built in 1938, which is considered Art Deco in Australia. As we were designing a bistro, we drew upon the French parallels. In France in that particular era, they were actually in Post Modernism. So, the colour palette is drawn from Le Corbusier\u2019s Polychromie Architecturale book, which was released in the 1930s. We started to take an approach of, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s look at a worldly view of how we expand its heritage rather than just reinterpreting an Art Deco building.\u2019 That drove a lot of decision-making around how the lights should work, for example, we couldn\u2019t attach lights to ceilings due to heritage constraints, so we took a more industrialist approach with brackets and arms. We end up heroing the beauty of the existing building as a result \u2013 the beautiful plaster ceilings, architraves and door reveals remain free of fixtures. That is key to understanding the concept of Marlowe.<\/p>\n

\"Marlowe<\/p>\n

View gallery<\/p>\n

CH: There\u2019s also this \u201880s and \u201890s dining culture influence. How does that show itself?<\/p>\n

JW: That shows itself particularly through the way rooms are arranged. Some tables in certain rooms have got white tablecloths with beautiful suede banquette seats and carpeted floors \u2013 we tried to bring in a little bit of that \u2018power lunch\u2019 energy from the \u201880s and \u201890s. I think it is a combo of the \u2018three sweet things\u2019, as I like to call them: a sleek palette to the interiors, paired with A Woman\u2019s Weekly-esque inspired \u201890s menu. The food is nostalgic, relatable and unfussy. Then there\u2019s a banging playlist, which has got Phil Collins and the kind of music I grew up listening to around my parents. It\u2019s the balance of those three things that makes it special. It\u2019s not purely interiors and design, it\u2019s about classic hospitality – the product and the experience.<\/p>\n

CH: I dined there two weeks ago. I had the coral trout wellington, which felt very Women\u2019s Weekly. It was incredible.<\/p>\n

JW: It\u2019s so good. There were a few benefits to the project taking a long time to come to fruition, and that was telling the operators, \u2018Okay, you should start collecting antique silverware, start going to op shops, start going to auctions, start collecting beautiful silver dishes and plates, goblets.\u2019 When you start to integrate old pieces that have a shared kind of history and story about them with the new tableware it deepens the layering of the venue, beyond what color the wall is.<\/p>\n

\"Marlowe<\/p>\n

View gallery<\/p>\n

CH: And it also gives it that \u2013 and I\u2019m guessing this is what you intended \u2013 but that feeling of dining at a friend\u2019s house, or their apartment.<\/p>\n

JW: Exactly right. That was definitely intended. In most instances, restaurants or venues have a large dining room and it\u2019s more like a function. Whereas we lent the other way and tried to embrace the intimacy of all these smaller rooms, so they actually start to feel quite domestic. There are really charming little tables for two and four on the sunrooms where you interact with the street, and you\u2019re looking out instead of inwards or at each other. It can be very intimate.<\/p>\n

CH: We were in one of the little window seats. Good people watching.<\/p>\n

JW: Really good people watching.<\/p>\n

CH: What were the biggest operational challenges to having a layout that\u2019s so fragmented. What did you have to consider and change and do differently?<\/p>\n

JW: A big one was solving how do you service the upper level of the restaurant when the kitchen is downstairs and you\u2019ve got to go through four other rooms to get to it? How can the food be hot and fresh? How do the wait staff on the upper levels know when to go down to the pass to circulate food and drinks? We added an additional bar upstairs so that each level can be serviced by a bar. We integrated waiter stations with ice buckets and wine buckets to minimize the foot traffic. These are all invisible things we work through as designers working on hospitality that, ultimately, are the backbones to operational efficiency.<\/p>\n

\"Marlowe<\/p>\n

View gallery<\/p>\n

CH: When I was there two weeks ago, I was joined by a notable hospitality designer who will stay anonymous. They really loved Marlowe, so I asked them if they had a question for you \u2013 designer to designer. Their question is, what was the budget and how did you do so much with the budget? Because they could tell that you were very clever with it.<\/p>\n

JW: Oh, I love that they picked that up! We were thrifty. I\u2019m going to use the word thrifty. I\u2019m a big believer in a disproportionate spend. So, let\u2019s spend the money where it counts, or where it\u2019s noticeable, and pull back in areas where it might be considered superfluous. Already we were unable to really do too much to the walls and ceilings, so that was always going to be a paint finish-driven exercise. So, instead we spent money on furniture, custom tables and chairs and lights \u2013 the things people sit in and touch. Lighting is so key in venues and at the forefront of our design process is how a room is lit. We\u2019re big on indirect lighting so our lighting strategy was really about highlighting the beauty that already exists in the building. Typically, with most of our venues, we\u2019ve got to create the beauty, because it doesn\u2019t exist. It\u2019s very rare to even have a restaurant in a heritage building in Brisbane. I know that seems bizarre for Melbourne, but it\u2019s what makes it extra charming here. It\u2019s also about reacquainting Brisbane with some of their lost heritage.<\/p>\n

\"Marlowe<\/p>\n

View gallery<\/p>\n

CH: Marlowe is so unique for a Brisbane context \u2013 like you said, it\u2019s a heritage building but it was also a private residential building type. What do you think this means for Brisbane dining? Do you think there\u2019ll be more of this? Can there be more of this? <\/p>\n

JW: I hope that it promotes reusing our heritage and existing buildings and embracing the very little charm that already exists in our city. There\u2019s a mentality in Brisbane about demolishing or removing and starting fresh, and it\u2019s the same on the Gold Coast, which means you\u2019ve actually got to create charm from scratch. It\u2019s something that\u2019s missing in our built environment in Queensland. So, we hope Marlowe is catalyst for embracing what exists and working with the ones that we have, whether they\u2019re good or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Occupying a heritage-listed Art Deco apartment block in Brisbane, Marlowe restaurant retains its original domestic layout \u2013 22…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-750956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}