PREVIOUS
PAGES
Paramount
House’s façade.
THIS PAGE
Clockwise from
top left: a Sunny
room; Paramount
Cofee Project;
a split-level
Loft room; the
hotel lobby.
having enough discussions about the dream hotel
we’d love to stay in, we thought we should just go
ahead and do it,” says Beard. Designed by Melbourne’s
Breathe Architecture, the hotel’s 27 rooms and two
suites occupy four floors of the former film-storage
warehouse adjoining Paramount Studios. The
buildings have been cleverly linked by a herringbone-
patterned copper screen stretching two storeys and
wrapping around the façade.
“To be a guest is to be a friend”
is the heart-on-sleeve sentiment
offered on the hotel’s website, and
the friendly gestures start at check-in.
Guests walk through Paramount
Coffee Project, past baristas busy
with pour-overs or coffee-cupping
demonstrations, to a smooth concrete
reception desk stamped with the
words “permanent vacation”. On
arrival, staff offer a glass from one
of three copper taps on the desk, perhaps pouring a
locally brewed sour beer, a natural wine or a kombucha.
Just as refreshing as the drink is the potential it
offers – enjoy your Wildflower amber ale, for
example, and the hotel team envisages you’ll end
up at the label’s brewery in Marrickville the next day
(see p88 for a profile of co-founder Topher Boehm).
“A lot of hotel lobbies scare me,” says Beard. “They feel
cold or weird, and alienate the community a bit.➤Coffee Project opened on the light-filled ground
floor in 2013, followed by the Golden Age Cinema
and Bar in the restored Art Deco screening room
downstairs. Studio space upstairs is inhabited by a
handful of creative agencies, while The Office Space
on the mezzanine is a sleek co-working hub
overlooking the café.
The rooftop Paramount Recreation Club, due to
open this month, is a breezy retreat for exercising and
socialising where white terrazzo
and greenery evoke Palm Springs
vibes. On the schedule are barre
classes, strength training, meditation
workshops and nutrition sessions, and
there’s a fancy canteen to boot. “It’s an
alternative to the somewhat maniacal
approach to fitness in the city,” says
director Barrie Barton, whose creative
and research agency Right Angle
Studio is located downstairs. “It says:
get out of the gym and into the fresh air.” The brief
at the Club Kiosk is “healthy food, but not health
food”, Barton says. And the menu, devised with
Longrain’s Griff Pamment andSam Christie,will be
a smorgasbord of wholesome fare – think oats soaked
in coconut water, citrus salad with agave, ricotta and
mixed nuts, and brown rice bowls with rare roast beef.
Paramount House Hotel is the jewel in the crown,
and a joint project by Beard, Dundon and Ng. “After“To be a guest
is to be a friend”
is Paramount
House Hotel’s
heart-on-sleeve
sentiment.GOURMET TRAVELLER 165