Melbourne Cup Carnival Marquees
The marquees inside the exclusive Birdcage at the Melbourne Cup Carnival might be about excess and grandeur on the surface, but they are also an enticing instrument for companies to project their brands and self-promote.
The Birdcage turns thirty in 2018. Corporate sponsors have come and gone but there has been no stopping the evolution of the infamous Flemington Racecourse marquees in that time. The marquees have evolved from, reportedly, party pies and plastic chairs at the Carlton United Brewery’s tent in 1988 to what they are today – multimillion-dollar, multistorey, branded buildings. For some cashed-up companies, a marquee in the Birdcage is a crucial part of their marketing strategy and it requires them to up the ante from year to year in order to be memorable and media-worthy. In 2017, several of the Birdcage marquees, with the help of some astute designers, did just that.
The Lexus Design Pavilion has been one of the most coveted tickets in town for fifteen years. Lexus has long been invested
in design. For the past five years it has held the Lexus Design Award, which supports emerging designers, and the winning designs inform a Lexus exhibition at Milan Design Week. So Lexus takes its self-titled “Design Pavilion” seriously. For this year’s pavilion, the skeletal structure was conceptualized by sustainable artist Joost Bakker with interiors by French-born, Sydney-based emerging designer Emilie Delalande of Studio Etic in her second year working on the pavilion.
Bakker’s structure was one of only a few in the Birdcage where the environmental impact of these temporary structures had been truly considered. The completely recyclable structure took just one day to erect and bolt together and had the lowest rate of post-event waste of all structures in the Birdcage. It was built using 100 percent reclaimed concrete and featured a rooftop garden. The interior’s three levels were a shimmering play of light and shade and elegantly interpreted Lexus’ new LS vehicle. The seductive colour palette – deep wine reds, smoky greys and bolts of brass – was translated in the pavilion’s forty-four-seat restaurant, perfumery, dessert station, bars and rooftop. Delalande’s deft touch goes beyond her short years in interior design and it’s a credit to Lexus that it allowed a young designer the invaluable opportunity of handling a much-publicized space.
At the Lavazza marquee, the brief was for a space that felt like a luxury Italian hotel. Dubbed Palazzo Lavazza, the marquee was designed by Neale Whitaker in his third year tasked with the job. The marquee was a glamorous nod to 1950s and 60s Italian design, with its arched ceilings, Amalfi-inspired floor tiles, velvet upholstery and Carrara marble-inspired laminate (this was a temporary space, after all). British-born, Melbourne-based artist Robert Doble painted the rich blue mural of faces that lined the back of the Lavazza bar.
The Tabcorp marquee by Mim Design was inspired by a betting pun – “to be at odds with one another.” Mim Design interpreted this beautifully, with striking contrasts between masculine (the steely, austere outer shell) and feminine (the pale wisteria that rained from the ceiling courtesy of florist Victoria Whitelaw), between dark (the timber steps of the stairway) and light (the crisp white wall panelling in the stairway), and between hard (robust steel frames and stools) and
soft (supple leathers, fresh peonies and ivy). Altogether, it was an immersive reference to all the things that make the Melbourne Cup Carnival iconic.
James Boag’s Cabin for the Curious, designed by the Design Depot, was inspired by the Tasmanian wilderness, with a perforated facade intended to look like a rocky mountain range. Materials such as raw timber, leather and wool were used to create an interior that felt like a comfortable pub and lakeside cabin. At Emirates, Londonbased creative agency Pulse Group invited guests to “journey through the clouds” in a marquee inspired by Emirates’ first and business class cabins. Twelve thousand tubes were used to create the marquee’s entry – a towering installation representing a cloudscape – and in the dining area, swarms of white hydrangeas floated from the ceiling.
For its 2017 marquee, Myer gave Amanda Henderson of Gloss Creative a “pass to play.” This was the theme of Myer’s marquee and Henderson and her hardworking team jumped at the chance to play with loud colour and shapes. On arrival, guests were greeted by a grand set of black steel doors before sauntering up a staircase into an elevated and expansive lounge area. The lounge was expertly dotted with unapologetic colour, including totems of pot plants, mustard-coloured carpeted walls and Grazia and Co’s Featherston Talking Chair in emerald green. A scalloped-oak-panelled, fifteen-metre bar lined the back wall, tucked in one corner was a cocktail conveyor belt (which is exactly what it sounds like) and a tunnel of golden, glistening mirrors provided the backdrop for a selfie booth.
Henderson is a bona fide veteran of marquee design at the Birdcage. At the 2017 carnival, Gloss Creative designed three – Myer, Schweppes and the Victoria Racing Club members’ area, 1 Oliver Street. She has designed more than sixty Birdcage marquees, her first being a Swedish cocktail lounge for Saab in 2002. It was a vast improvement on Saab’s efforts in previous years, a hired tent with “pretty bad carpet tiles,” as Henderson says. A Google search of her past marquees reveals an anthology of timeless, evocative and utterly groundbreaking work. Henderson is among a select few who have been instrumental in redefining temporary design, and this at an event that is “the most lavish temporary facility on the planet,” as Victoria Racing Club chair Amanda Elliott puts it. It’s safe to say that the Birdcage would look very different today had Henderson never made her mark. A