MATSO’S SUNSHINE COAST BREWERY

Yaseera Moosa

• Architects

Matso’s Sunshine Coast Brewery transforms Eumundi’s heritage-listed Joe’s Waterhole into a major brewery, restaurant and garden, designed by Five Mile Radius in collaboration with Knight Wilson. Since opening, the project has been recognised across architecture, sustainability and hospitality awards, including the Gabriel Poole Award for Building of the Year, the Award for Commercial Architecture and the national Sustainability Award for Hospitality and Adaptive Reuse.

The project restores the original timber and tin pub while establishing a new connection between Eumundi’s main street and the previously underused landscape behind it. Years of ad-hoc and water-damaged additions were removed and circulation reconfigured to create a continuous experience from the historic pub through the new hospitality spaces and into the garden.

photo_credit Yaseera Moosa — Yaseera Moosa

Four new gable-roofed pavilions reinterpret the familiar Queensland shed, mediating between the scale of the original pub and the open landscape beyond. Large openings, deep shade, cross-ventilation and high-volume spaces create an open, breezy hospitality environment while providing the flexibility required of a working brewery, restaurant and events venue. The simple shed structures were conceived as an adaptable framework that can continue to change over time.

Material reuse was embedded in the architecture from the outset. Before demolition, existing buildings were surveyed to identify materials that could be salvaged and returned to the project. Timber, masonry and metal were recovered and reworked into the new architecture and detailing, reducing the demand for new material while retaining traces of the site's history.

Five Mile Radius also designed and fabricated the majority of the project’s custom furniture and fixtures. Much of the original pub furniture was recovered, stripped back and returned as contemporary pieces, alongside new furniture made from recycled and Australian hardwoods. Working directly between architecture, salvage and fabrication allowed irregular reclaimed materials to be incorporated into a cohesive collection across the venue.

The landscape is equally important to the project. The new pavilions open directly onto a large regenerated garden, creating a sequence of indoor and outdoor spaces that can accommodate everyday dining, large gatherings, temporary events and seasonal programming. Opposite the Eumundi Markets, the project draws activity through the site and gives the historic pub a much stronger relationship with the street and town around it.

Matso’s demonstrates how heritage, circular construction and contemporary hospitality can work together at a significant commercial scale. Its success has helped demonstrate the viability of material reuse within a major construction program, while creating a venue that feels established, generous and distinctly Eumundi rather than a new hospitality development dropped onto a historic site.