Tender, a multi-purpose community space in Brunswick by Placement, exemplifies how designing beyond sight can evoke all-encompassing ease.
Design often emphasises visuals, but providing multi-sensory experiences was at the crux of Tender’s design. As a yoga teacher, architect and co-director of Placement, Stephanie Kitingan explains, “Architects focus a lot on what a design looks like, but the one element that is so elusive, yet maybe the most important, is atmosphere. It’s hard to capture that sensory aspect that binds everything together.”
Led by Kitingan and Nik Thorup, an educator and DJ, Tender promotes gathering through yoga, deep listening sessions, creative workshops and community events. Guided by signage of two hands intertwined, guests enter via a bluestone alleyway off Sydney Road, Brunswick. The strategic laneway entry moderates the transition from bustling city to contemplative space, while the steady flow of visitors has made the secluded alleyway safer.
The graffitied building opens into a bright breakout zone, with white exposed brick walls, a sofa and sculptural chairs around a raw-edged timber table. Natural light is drawn in through a full-height accordion window that opens onto the laneway. Further inside, the bar focuses on hospitality rather than alcohol, and guests can remove their shoes and hydrate before a session. Polycarbonate and timber partitions delineate each room, diffusing light throughout.
During deep listening sessions, a soundscape plays from the vinyl station in the main studio. The space is aglow under orange-tinted downlights and backlit wall panels. It is cocooned in timber, from floorboards and exposed ceiling beams to a framework that blankets the walls with inlaid acoustic panels that buffer against the din of Sydney Road. Guests intuitively configure themselves around loose furnishings, mats and cushions.
With sound the key to the space’s transformative quality, the echoey plasterboard ceiling from the building’s bridal store era was removed. In addition to acoustic wall treatments, Pitt and Giblin fitted speakers and conducted testing to ensure the design achieved an acoustic sweet spot across reverberation and absorption levels.
A recent recipient of a commendation at the 2026 Victorian Architecture Awards, Tender has catalysed observational research with James Cook University, RMIT University and sound studio, Sonaur. Researchers are currently analysing their studies which investigated “how listening informs the space and the space informs listening,” Kitingan says. Reflecting anecdotally on community response, she notes, “I see the way people use the space, the changes in them and the incidental relationships that form.”
Atmosphere might go unseen, but its effects are felt and visible at Tender, where people instinctively dance, embroider, read, create or simply listen, together.
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