Verity Lane Market

Mather Architecture, now Trella, opens the Sydney Building to Verity Lane, combining a food hall, bars and outdoor dining within a renewed heritage setting.
Food hall with exposed brick, structure and small vendor counters
Lean Timms

Practice: Trella
Photographer: Lean Timms
Project: Food hall and heritage adaptation
Traditional Country: Ngunnawal
Architecture and interiors: Mather Architecture, now Trella
Base building builder: Built
Fitout builder: Emporium Building

The place

Canberra Civic, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Verity Lane Market gives part of Canberra’s heritage-listed Sydney Building a new role as a food hall and hospitality precinct. Designed by Mather Architecture, now Trella, the project reconnects four original building blocks and makes the rear lane a place to enter, dine and gather.

The work establishes a route between the Northbourne Avenue colonnade and Verity Lane. Large glazed openings connect indoor rooms with outdoor dining, while the rear frontage introduces articulated brickwork that responds to the older building. The laneway becomes an active address for the precinct.

Bar seating beside large openings to Verity Lane
Lean Timms

Inside, removal of later alterations reveals brickwork, structure and traces of earlier uses. Small open kitchen tenancies share a consistent fitout language, with flexible landlord-provided kitchen infrastructure allowing vendors and temporary residencies to change over time.

Bars and dining rooms bring a more detailed layer to the exposed fabric, with timber panelling, stone counters, metalwork and lighting recalling different periods of the building’s history. Built is credited for the base building and Emporium Building for the fitout; selected photographs are individually credited to Lean Timms, Tim Shaw and Pew Pew Studio.