Scholé

Scholé serves to offer the initiating urban frontage of the overall coffin workshops site. The architectural effort had to negotiate stringent heritage requirements, facilitate remediation, and emphasise spatial outcomes that prioritised high-quality, staged, and economical urban room-making and materiality as a primary experiential quality. The combination of these various conditions was conceived to support a new culture and society of shared dining. Not focussed on large scale commercial yields, it seeks to build society a table at a time. Harmony, humanity and curiosity are at the heart of all Scholé crafts.

The architecture concentrates on the spatial conditions offered by the narrow-frontage, and high volume of the shopfront. These qualities are used to ‘envelope’ and strengthen the quality of the main dining room. The room is realised by repurposing site-salvaged Tasmanian blackwood, which was traditionally used for coffin making, to create a ‘scaffold’ of fine joinery, that both holds the society of the room, and allows for further layers of narrative and purpose to emerge. A sense of expansion is offered in the tight plan by a high-cornice of mirror, which extends the plane of the press-tinned ceilings infinitely.

Scholé has two fundamental operational modes. One as a kind of Tachinomi (Japanese Standing Bar), which offers an intensity of patrons, sharing food and drink, on a walk-in basis. And another as a single setting 10-seat table service. Given the pressures on hospitality since Covid lockdowns, this operating model of Scholé is ambitious but clarifying. It seeks to realign the focus on mass-dining as a restaurant model, toward a gastronomy that builds society – one table at a time. The way that this sense of society is magnified, is through the ‘place-setting’ offered by the civic qualities of the room.

Scholé is a restaurant and wine bar located in Ivy Preddis’ original confectionary shop. It is a place for leisure, connection and community. The Greek word for leisure (scholé) is the origin of Latin scola, the name for the institutions of education and learning mean ‘leisure’. To the ancient mind, scholé was about pursuing creativity and losing oneself in the process. The menu has a reverence for seasonal rhythms, biodynamic process and local produce. Ingredients are sourced from friends, neighbours and thoughtful, highly local growers. Every act of careful cultivation is celebrated in this kitchen. The menu is à la carte and always designed to share. Behind the bar, the drinks list reads like an inventory of old friends. Relationships are treasured with winemakers who follow principles of organic farming and spontaneous fermentation. The architecture is compact, but civically layered. The interiors open generously to the street, to maximise spaciousness, patronage, and to catalyse urban life. The new layers of interior fabric are entirely composed of site-salvaged Tasmanian Blackwood. Exquisite original glass lights are recommissioned. Scholé has three modes of operation: as a Tachinomi (an intense, urban standing bar), Seated Dining for 10, and as pop-up farm-grocer for Felds Farm.