he Porterhouse is an iconic bar on Dublin’s Nassau street. For this project, We were tasked with transforming the laneway at the rear of the premises into a dynamic and colourful beer garden. This laneway consisted of a handful of barrels mostly used by customers popping out for a smoke with their drink. The challenge was to optimise the narrow space to create seating for 50 customers.
As this project was partially funded by Schweppes and Dingle. We needed to also include visibility for both brands.
A smaller room within the Porterhouse bar that opens out onto the garden was also to be included in the project.
We decided to dedicate the interior space to Dingle and the exterior to Schweppes rather than battling two brands to co exist in a small space.
As a sustainability measure and to optimise the budget, We decided to repurpose equipment from the Porterhouse brewery into furniture for the garden.
Barrel holders and kegs made up the bases of the tables and stools. The addition of quality timber table and stool tops and colourful powder coating in the Schweppes brand colours transformed these pieces into a furniture suite fit for a trendy new beer garden. Wall-mounted tables and shelves optimise the limited space in the garden.
The addition of "empty" powder coated steel frames transformed a dull, grey wall into colourful, tactile art that tied the garden together. Varying sizes and shapes of overlapping frames, "frame" the old and the new of the garden.
As the laneway is visible from Grafton Street, we wanted to create an eyecatching entrance and space that would attract footfall from an already busy shopping street.
We achieved this with the use of neon signage, overhead warm lighting and colourful wayfiding strips in the Schweppes brand colours that lead you into the garden and "pull" you towards the other end of the lane. Each strip represents and leads you to a different aspect of the garden. Yellow for Schweppes extends the length of the laneway to a colourful mural displaying many of the Porthouse own brand beer labels. While the blue way finding strip will bring you into the dedicated Dingle Distillery room.
The Dingle room uses a blue and white colour palette with soft green foiliage hanging from the ceiling to create a vibrant but intimate space. The existing tables were updated with pops of colour to bring them up to date with the design of the overall space.