It always felt, in talking to you as this project was coming together and then again through completion, that there was an almost tangible sense of pride held in what H&E created here.
Chris Grinham You know, it was one of those funny jobs where you get an opportunity to really put your signature on a building that has real heritage – the only significant Sydney building at the time by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Incredible. And to be able to go and put a small addition on something like that is special.  

Must be nice to see H&E’s work here so often highlighted within the PR and marketing outreach regarding Sofitel Sydney Wentworth – it’s all about the bar and that canopy. 
From first conversation with the original owner to finishing this was nearly seven years. So, I’ll be honest here and say that with Wentworth, we genuinely came to question whether it would come to fruition – that what we’d proposed and wanted to achieve would ever be seen. 
It was one of those jobs where you design something, a client says, ‘yes, we like this, let’s get it approved.’ Then they decide to sell the asset. It goes into new ownership. They then commit to doing the project, albeit with a few modifications, and you get that approved. It’s all the way through. You’re thinking, ‘well, at what point is this going to fall over?’ 
To then to be able to work with the right collaborator, and I don’t not call them a subcontractor because they were absolutely collaborators on this project – to work with ARC – and have the building owner see the benefit of using these guys and that they’re going to deliver it fabulously, that’s cool. 
It’s never just about designing and managing the process, it’s all the rigmarole and so to then get to a point where, you can say, ‘hey, we really delivered’ … That’s as rewarding as what we created and the experience and the space.  

A labour of love this one?
Yes, very much. Because it was something we just had to do. And I remember when the first steel went in and you started to see the shape come together…Then the plywood went on, then they wrapped it. I still remember seeing it – they had the waterproof insulated membrane piece that goes over the plywood and when that first went on it looked like this blue UFO that had landed on top of the building. It was super cool. And slowly but surely it came together and it was fantastic.  

Talk to me a little bit then about walking back into the bar a year on – seeing this being used and embraced and given the life you envisaged and hoped for it. What’s that feel like? 
It’ so lovely to see a space with people in it – to see a space where people are enjoying themselves. 
And I think what makes this even better is that there were issues with that culture when the space was originally created, issues around wind and the environment and the weather. And to come up with a vision and a plan of how to technically mitigate those things and then deliver something quite poetic that solves those issues … Well, to then see people using it, particularly on shitty, windy, wet days where they would never have been able to operate that business, but today there’s still 180 people enjoying themselves, that’s beautiful.

H&E breathed new life into this space – you’ll forever be part of its evolution.
And that’s a nice thing to be part of – to see something evolve and move and live this new life. It’s really great.  

Do you run through the space when you get a few minutes in the city – and do you bemoan some things as all designers and architects and creatives do on revisiting earlier work? 
So often you revisit things and think, ‘oh wow, that’s not working quite the way I thought it would be, or, ‘that’s failed’ or ‘that’s not worked’, or whatever it is. So, there’s always the element of looking at things and learning – understanding what it is you can do better next time. But here, one of the nice things about that project for me personally is that I don’t really walk in and go, ‘fuck, we should have done that differently.’ It’s just not that way with Wentworth. There’s not a lot about it that I feel didn’t quite work or should have done another way. I look at it and I really Iike the way it came together – it just works.