25 years

In 1992, soon after returning, broke, from a year of travel Larry Weston began designing their 1^st small projects. Larry worked day jobs as well as tutoring at QUT and completed the 1^st bar merlo at queen st, it still operates today and is still the same island bar layout that became the model for all the bar merlo’s that followed.

Larry Weston Architect became the “go to” team designing many inner-city Brisbane bar/café icons including main squeeze, lychee lounge, yomama, flamingo, rics, fat boys, trout, KYdeli and built with an emphasis on recycling, collaborating with artists and always a touch of gentle humour.

Always proactive with learning, listening, observing, researching Larry took on tutoring at both QUT and UQ and began doing residential works, houses & apartments on tiny 10mx10m sites or steeply sloping west facing blocks with lots of trees to keep.

Importantly Larry along with his wife and sister then designed, built and ran their own bookstore and espresso bar, redbooks, and then established his own office in the same building in Brisbane’s gritty Fortitude Valley escaping at weekends to the idyllic beaches of northern New South Wales or Stradbroke Island.

Larry's practice took on houses, multi-residential around Queensland, corporate offices in Singapore and cafes, kiosks and food concessions in airports, train stations and stadiums all around Australia.

The owners of the newly established Universal Store bought the building that housed the office, bookstore and espresso bar and we began to design their stores as well.

50 store openings, a warehouse and corporate office for Universal Store then service stations for Blackbird Energy, Spoon Delis, and restaurants for Beach Burrito Company.

25 years later Larry's design team are closing in on 30 openings for merlo coffee their 1^st commercial client, that range from 20sqm kiosks to 3000 sqm state of the art roasting, storage, packaging facilities and corporate office.

Current projects are as diverse as always and range from exclusive “villas” in the Mentawais, Indonesia to utilitarian “bunkies” in French River, Ontario, Canada. All for clients they have been working with for decades.