The Victory Hotel (originally the Prince of Wales Hotel) was constructed in 1855 and is Brisbane’s oldest remaining city public bar or ‘pub’. Surviving multiple alterations and additions over its lifetime, the building retains its commanding presence and original structure on the corner of Edward and Charlotte Streets in Brisbane’s central business district. Its beer garden is a place revered in the collective memory of generations of city workers.

The redevelopment of the site is a twofold challenge: resurface and restore the 19th-century architecture and introduce a contemporary hotel tower providing a distinctive and memorable destination that evolves the site’s history. A nod to the beloved Beer Garden, a new Hollows will return a pre-colonial landscape with verdant outdoor settings and landscape pockets that rise and flourish on terraces and balconies.

Stretching skyward over 51 storeys, a concealed super structure lifts the tower six storeys above the ground, cantilevered over the historic pub. The ‘reverse podium’ approach preserves the pub’s visual and spatial prominence as well as natural light and visibility to the adjacent state heritage-listed Metro Arts building. Within the lifted podium, vibrant bar and dining spaces and hotel amenities are sleeved around the structure, populating and expanding the beer garden vertically and preserving it as a destination for the city.

A contemporary counterpoint to the 19th-century pub, the 285-room hotel will celebrate Brisbane’s architectural and cultural heritage and distinctive subtropical identity. The slender tower finds expression in the abstraction of the Flemish Bond bricks of the historic pub’s masonry. Upended and upscaled, the new motif recalls bricks laid sequentially on their long and short sides, forming a masonry facade distinctive from the glass towers surrounding it.

The Victory Hotel redevelopment responds to Brisbane’s increasing need for hotel rooms and hospitality venues that strengthen and amplify our river city’s identity. The project will conserve and showcase the beloved corner pub, reimagine the iconic beer garden as a public realm and vertical experience, and create a new and expanded visitor experience for the 2032 Games city.