One of the studio's first Valletta commissions came through entrepreneur and friend, the late Desmond Vella. Having just leased a derelict pub along Valletta's ring road, his brief was simple: create the city's hippest bar and restaurant, where music, fashion and contemporary cuisine converged.

The site, an awkward triangular patch of land, faced a concrete vault inside a ten-storey bastion wall. Given the heritage sensitivities such a site demanded, the studio designed a simple, reversible intervention, kiosk-like in function, plugged into the ancient fortifications to usher in their regeneration.

A black, steel-timber box held the bar and all the back-of-house space, while hiding the building services within it. On approach, a concrete carpet terraced down to the entrance, split in two by an illuminated waterfall that sank around the raw, fortified landscape. Balanced carefully between inside and out, the box's protrusion, controversial at the time, created a terrace overlooking the views above.

The project won the Fondazione Barbara Cappochin architectural prize for Best International Work in 2007, along with the Din l-Art Ħelwa prize for best rehabilitation.