Drygate Brewing Co., Glasgow

Graven Images is one of our favourite names in Scottish design. Their experiments with Harris Tweed on product design, and their work creating the interior of the Blythswood Square Hotel in Glasgow (using a plethora of the aforementioned textiles) represent some of the most inherently Scottish as well as forward-thinking work to come out of the country in recent years.

The company recently completed work on the two storey Drygate Building for Drygate Brewing Co. in Glasgow’s rapidly gentrifying East End. Billed as the UK’s first “experiential craft brewery”, it includes a restaurant, bar, roof terrace, events/gallery space and “studio kit” area that invites home brewers to try their hand at craft brewery and even create their own brand.

An old 1960s warehouse has been transformed into something industrial but refined, while the branding, packaging and signage by Glasgow-based studio D8 is similarly clean, strong and powerful. We’re particularly thrilled that the restaurant is an outpost of Leith’s craft-beer-and-charcuterie powerhouse The Vintage, which is, along with the Timberyard, our joint favourite casual dining room over in the capital of Edinburgh.

Shadowed by three urban architectural references – the Drygate tower blocks, Glasgow’s famous Necropolis, and the stacks and convolutions of Tennent’s industrial-scale brewery – the entire building, including the restored roof, has been painted in dark grey to create an imposing silhouette of its archetypical factory shape. With painted cladding and new oversized signage, Drygate Brewing Co. now sits proudly as a fourth recognisable landmark in the area.

Throughout the interior, Graven has paired hard surfaces with warmth: mild steel, cast concrete, solid wood, and polished patinated copper in the bar; hardwood herringbone flooring butts up against the steel angle-frame screen that separates the bar from the working brewery; and surfaces of vibrantly coloured resin and paint play off against metal mesh and blackened steel. C

Drygate Brewing Co., 85 Drygate, Glasgow, G4 0UT, UK
0141-212 8815; drygate.com