Meet Rory Unite, the Sydney Designer Furnishing Camperdown Commons and The Matrix (Yes, Both)

Sydney's newest urban farm and eatery, Camperdown Commons, has had the city buzzing since opening in June 2016. What was once the Camperdown Bowling Club has become an accessible, green community hub, composed of Pocket City Farms and Acre Eatery. Surrounded by vegetable patches, the 350-seat restaurant is all clean lines, blonde wood and lofty ceilings. And it was furnished by the guy who did the same for The Matrix. Really.

To complete Camperdown Commons' earthy and elegant space, the team called on local designer Rory Unite, who not only specialises in wooden furniture but has worked as a film set designer for Hollywood blockbusters like The Matrix and The Great Gatsby. Made primarily from reclaimed materials, Unite's furniture complements Acre's vegetable-patch-to-table ethos, providing the perfect frame for the restaurant's healthy, colourful meals. So how did Unite find his way from Neo to Acre?

A sculptor by training and big time Hollywood film set designer, Unite followed a winding path to furniture design. "It was all a bit accidental," he laughs. When Unite was working on the set of The Great Gatsby, his in-laws asked him for help renovating their Palm Beach home. "I took on the project and ended up getting very involved," he says. After working on the initial renovation, Unite began to create custom furniture for the house, turning the project into a much bigger one than he had initially anticipated. It wasn't long before Unite fell in love with the furniture design process. "I enjoyed creating pieces my in-laws would be interacting with on a daily basis," he says, "The idea that I would build something that would literally affect the way they lived their everyday lives was an exciting one."

While the leap into furniture was a daunting one, Unite says it was also a somewhat natural progression. "When you're into materials and processes, it's all the same language, whether you're working on a film set, a sculpture, or a piece of furniture," he explains. "It's just the context that changes." Unite soon set up a small workshop in Sydney's northern beaches, and it wasn't long before Andrew Goldsmith, of the Boathouse restaurants, discovered him. "I designed a range of furniture for the restaurants and, as the Boathouse empire expanded, I started looking abroad for workshops that would help create the amount of product Goldsmith required," Unite explains. He eventually settled on Indonesia, and moved to Java to set up a workshop.

The move was a challenge — not least because Unite did not speak a word of the local language. Yet he found that, despite the language barrier, he was able to connect with local craftsmen through their shared passion for design. "Design is a language," Unite says. "Materials communicate, they tell stories about their origins, and that of their maker as well."

At Camperdown Commons, Unite hopes his furniture will communicate a sense of the natural, and the handmade. "I just love the textural quality of these pieces," he says running a hand over the table surface. "You can literally feel and see the hand of the maker in this piece." Indeed, Unite's furniture — and the food prepared with fresh produce from the gardens — transports guests to a simpler past, when you actually knew the people who built your furniture and harvested your food. Go on, try it out, pull up a Unite-made pew at Camperdown Commons this week.

Find Rory Unite's designs at Camperdown Commons and The Boathouse venues, including Shelly Beach, Palm Beach and Balmoral Beach.