Breaking down the design of Disco Pantera

Welcome back to Boothby’s Sydney briefing, where this week we are unpacking the design of a one of a kind bar, Disco Pantera.

Set a stone’s throw from Circular Quay, Disco Pantera opened in September of 2024. The bar is the first from bartending brothers Ross and Gordon Purnell, who — along with Ross’ partner and the bar’s design lead, Cass Siow — have created a space that has garnered attention on the global stage.

(Their next bar, Easy Peasy, is on the way — read here for more).

The design of the place was a labour of love for the trio, one that saw the bar win the title of best bar design at The World’s 50 Best Bars awards in Hong Kong in October last year. Judged against bars from around the world, by a panel of design and architecture experts, the bar picked up the title thanks to their focus on using secondhand and repurposed materials in an eclectic yet ultimately warm and inviting aesthetic.

Here, the team speak to Boothby about how they developed the design, and break down the curatorial approach they’ve applied to building out the space.

BOOTHBY: What’s the origin story for Disco Pantera & Tigra — why this space?

ROSS PURNELL: We always loved this area, because there is a juxtaposition between old and new going on. It’s a big new precinct, it was quite interesting — a lot of offices that were going in. One of the most advanced adaptive reuse projects in the world, apparently.

CASS SIOW: When you design a site that is a blank canvas, a cold shell, you have a very different approach than if you were taking over a bar or a restaurant, something that had a previous life and maybe pre-existing structures or internal layouts.

BOOTHBY: There’s already channels of behaviour.

CASS SIOW: Exactly. What you have is different problems, but what you have is different solutions as well. When we walked into this place, it was literally concrete floors, concrete walls. It was just grey.

BOOTHBY: How quickly did you land on the concept for this space?

CASS SIOW: It’s not a concept space per se, it’s not a concept bar — what it is, it’s an accumulation or a gathering and curation of things.

The first vintage item that’s in this bar, we actually bought years before we ever had the bar. It was this mindset of looking for the right objects, looking for interesting things that sparked concepts.

ROSS PURNELL: Yeah, there’s a light globe in the hallway. We bought it just outside of Bellingen. This old guy just has this big shed filled with the most amazing knickknacks from all over Australia. I found this massive smoked glass globe.

CASS SIOW: We didn’t have an intention for it, but we just couldn’t go past it. So we picked it up. We just had to have it. It was in our car for rest of the roadtrip.

The rest of the things we gathered, we followed a similar concept: we would find pieces that had some history or intrigue or storytelling that we were quite interested in. It became a process of collection.

BOOTHBY: Designing it this way, does the place take on a life of its own?

ROSS PURNELL: We were after something truly unique. We didn’t want to be able to design this place this way again. We wanted it to have its own personality.

CASS SIOW: You couldn’t replicate this again if you tried. Nothing’s shop-bought. It’s not out of a catalogue that has a thousand units in a warehouse somewhere. Everything is one off or reclaimed or reused.

ROSS PURNELL: It’s gonna be a nightmare if something breaks.

1. Brooding banquettes. “Under the banquette seating we actually put booze storage,” Cass says. “Functional features. Because it was all made to order, we could include these details.”
2. Watch your step. “If you had a stool up at the bar, you want this step because it’s where your foot rests — it’s a comfort thing, ergonomics,” says Cass. “And these vintage tiles [from Bendigo Pottery] weren’t slip rated, so they had to be on a vertical riser.”
3. Light sconces. “They use a lot of volcanic ash in this glaze, and it gives all of these incredible vibrant colours, reds and oranges,” says Cass. “It’s such a natural process that every single piece is going to turn out quite completely unique. We ended up finding 11 of them. They were all completely different.”
4. Princely prints. “His name is Nick Dahl,” Ross says. “He’s in Minneapolis. Such a good guy. He does all these beautiful screen prints.”
5. Stainless stools. “The stools are custom made,” says Cass. “We did a thicker tube metal in the polished stainless steel to make a real bling moment in the design. Stainless steel reflects the environment that it’s in really nicely. So as the lights go down, the candles are flickering, it reflects the warmth back throughout the space.”
6. The meat slicer. “This is a 1950s Hobart meat slicer,” Ross says. “It came from a guy who had his own meat curing business. He went around to farmers markets. It was just getting too old to carry it because it’s cast iron.”
7. Shiny bathroom balls. “Because it’s so close to the ground here, people keep on trying to steal it,” says Ross. “So our mirror ball doesn’t turn anymore. It’s got a couple of injuries along the way. But we still love it nonetheless.”
8. Tigra Tiles. “It has a randomised colourway pattern, but it wasn’t random,” says Cass. “It was a white base and we hand-slotted where all the colours would go. And on that day, Gordon’s eldest, Charlie, was on school holidays. I said, ‘Charlie, pick your favourite colour.’ He chose green. And he chose where all the green tiles lay. To this day he loves chatting about his part in it.”

The Last Word

Edition Hospitality — the group behind Melbourne venues Reine & La Rue, Florentino, and the just opened Privé — is looking for a bar supervisor for Nomad Sydney.

Harrison Kenney is in town tomorrow, Tuesday 11 August, with a masterclass for Campari Academy called Bitter/Future at 2pm at Bar Conte, before a popup at Shell House from 5pm until 9pm. Learn more.

The Liquid & Larder group’s Bar Julius closes at the end of August, with next door neighbour The Apollo Restaurant Group taking over the hotel bar space — they’re looking for a restaurant manager for the new project now.

Bar Tilda, the cocktail bar at the historic Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, is looking for a bartender.