Winters Bar & Parker Browns Dublin

Winters Bar interior shot

DUBLIN

WINTERS BAR & PARKER BROWNS

VENUES, FEBRUARY 2007, COMMENTS

The surrounding suburbs of Dublin have been experiencing an ongoing surge in population and prosperity, according to an international annual survey, as the soaring price of office space tempts business investment away from Dublin’s famous Docklands financial epicentre. This year’s Demographia International survey also reveals that housing in Dublin has also become ‘severely unaffordable’, with the median house price of E350,000 more than six times larger than the median annual wage.

This is good news for leisure businesses springing up in overlooked areas of Dublin such as Dundrum, as whole markets of urban professionals expropriate from the city centre in search of affordable lifestyles. With Ryan Air announcing five new routes into Dublin, the tourism pound is also likely to enjoy yet another boost, bringing into the historic town, with its dramatic ruins of Dundrum Castle, a renewed number of visitors. The rise of Dundrum’s social scene has been inevitable, and the recently opened Winters Bar and it’s upstairs club Parker Browns have accordingly prospered. Owned by Paul and Margaret Montgomery and business partner Pat Curtain, the venue enjoys a plum position within the enormous Dundrum Town Centre development, the largest shopping centre in Ireland and Europe which opened in late ’05.

Winters sits opposite Ireland’s first Harvey Nichols store, and is next door neighbours with one of the biggest cinema complexes in Ireland. Busy shopping days and releases of high profile films keep the bar and restaurant full to capacity at weekends, and Parker Browns also benefits from a privileged position within the local circuit, being the only upmarket club with a 2am licence and large capacity outdoor smoking terrace. Staff from the shopping centre and the nearby Sandyford Industrial Estate, as well as local residents and visitors descending from the trains of the Laus tram line, typically make up the bulk of the 450 nightly visitors.

The convenience of Winters’ position in Dundrum’s commercial landscape is matched by the pull of its elegant period interior. The venue features endless nods to 1950s diner culture, with retro style seating and the panel work detailing, while the back wall of the carvery is wholly taken up by an impressive display of 1950s sunburst wall clocks. Iroko timber frameworks gives the venue a classy homeliness, while lightboxes, painted with sepia scenes of leaveless trees adds a stylistic nod to the ‘Winters’ concept.

The wooden bar is the central feature in the room and its expansive back bar is filled with wine bottles. Meanwhile, the Tom Dixon copper sphere shades add a retro feel to the venue, and the selection of leather fixed seating and booths from Derry’s Interiors enchance the timeless feel.
The designs for the venue borrow from the Montgomery owned Chambers Bar in Cork, where O:Donnell O:Neil Design Associate’s created a theme based on an old fashioned haberdashery, making adventurous use of wrapped mannequins and old dress making patterns from the ‘30s to the ‘60s.

For Winters, Paul and Margaret Montgomery invited project designers Anne Marie O’Neill and Alison Masters from O:Donnell O:Neill to apply their skills a second time.

Alison and Anne-Marie were challenged to give Winters a wide appeal to attract the day time shoppers, and a more glamorous identity for a niche market of 23 to 30 year olds at Parker Browns. Part of this glamour has been generated from the refurbished smoking terrace, a large existing drinking space overlooking Old Sandyford Road and disclosing the club’s inviting interior to the passers-by.
“The smoking area in Parker Browns was actually part of the architecture of the building and was purpose built in time for the smoking ban,” says O:Donnell O:Neill. “It is a huge draw for the club. We added colour changing LED strip lights at floor level. As the smoking area is at first floor level and located in a very prime position in the building it acts as a beacon for Parker Browns at night.”

A state of the art sound system on both floors has been installed by professional light and sound specialists EFX Ireland, who have based their solution around two separate elements of Tannoy’s growing installation speaker range. The set up was proposed by consultants Eoghan Murphy Audio Services who suggested Tannoy’s Arena system to create a balance of cosmetic appeal and good quality audio for Winters. The compact Arenas feature a small but powerful 4” Dual Concentric driver and bass driver in a robust cast alloy cabinet. Sixteen Arena units have been supplemented by seven strategically placed Tannoy VS10BP subwoofers linked by two Tannoy TDX1 speaker controllers, while the whole system is driven by MC2 Audio T1000 amplifiers. Downstairs, the compact dance floor of Parker Browns demanded a powerful sound, but one that could be tightly controlled so that the high sound pressure levels would quickly fall away in other areas of the upper floor venue. The integrated DSP control and active components of Tannoy’s VNET system satisfied the requirement here. Boasting the facilities normally only found in top of the range rack mount system processors and crossovers are available, each VNET speaker in the installation can be considered as an independently adjustable sound system negating the requirement for additional bulky amplifier racks. A total of four Tannoy VNET 12HP loudspeakers and four Tannoy VNET 15HL subwoofers have been used on the dance floor with a further nine passive V6 loudspeakers and four VS10BP subwoofers used within the surrounding bar and eating areas. Both floors are additionally controlled via two BSS Soundweb London BLU-10 Programmable Controllers and two BLU-16 Signal Processors.

The VNET sound has already proved a vital component of other multi-venues such as the much vaunted Karbon in Glasgow. For Winters and Parker Browns, the system completes a venue that proves you don’t need to be in the centre of Dublin to enjoy a glamorous night out in a beautifully decorated venue.

Words: Leo Batchelor

From: February 2007 Issue

Subscribe to NIGHT magazine