Rocket Roof Top Bar adaptively reuses the roof space of a three-storey building in the west of the Adelaide CBD. The clients brief was to transform their building roof top into a flexible outdoor venue and small city oasis.

Grieve Gillett Architects managed early consultation with the Adelaide City Council to garner strong support for the scheme, which houses a bar, small outdoor cinema, unisex toilets, fixed seating, planting beds and painted timber shade structures.

The existing concrete roof slab was screeded to create drainage falls then topped with artificial turf. Patterned concrete breeze block walls and stripped shade canopies line the roof terrace edge and a large central planter complete with mature palm tree completes the urban oasis. Fixed seats, planters and colourful seating offer varying places to lounge and relax. The aesthetic slips easily between Palm Springs and a Cuban yachting holiday, with a simple white colour scheme set against the changing sky, a grassy field, splashes of greenery and textural shifts in the painted concrete block walls.