The mancave mainstay that became a kitchen must-have
How COVID changed when — and where — we like to drink
4 min
World health events have always made an impact on the domestic front. From the introduction of indoor plumbing to deal with water borne diseases in Victorian times to the rise of seaside resorts as a panacea for respiratory ailments like tuberculosis, architectural design has always risen to the challenges and demands of modern living.
So while the recent pandemic has elevated the importance of domestic design ranging from bigger and better bathrooms to fully equipped home offices, there are quieter but no less significant changes afoot in the kitchen.
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As lockdowns kept all but the most essential workers at home, many began looking at ways to replicate restaurant and bar experiences within their own four walls. Although some people already had dedicated bar areas, others gathered in communal areas like the kitchen to try their hand at making their favourite drink. As restrictions eased, it’s a trend that has continued to gather pace.
Whiskey ambassador, James Buntin, says often it simply makes good sense to make drinks at home.
“When you’re paying between $22 and $25 for a cocktail and you have four of those, that’s $100,” he says. “It becomes quite expensive and so during COVID a lot of people started to create their own drinks instead.”
For connoisseurs with a particular preference for spirits like whiskey, vodka or gin, Buntin says perfecting your favourite cocktail at home can be a more satisfying experience than ordering it at a bar.
“The home bar is not usually set up for making lots of different drinks — you won’t get a menu,” he says. “Generally, it’s one or two drinks that are the owners’ favourites. It’s about simplicity, so it’s your space and you have everything within reach and it becomes a pleasure.”
Kitchen designer and director of Minosa, Darren Genner, says a built-in bar has become a popular must-have among his clients.
“During COVID, the kitchen became the headmaster’s station where mum or dad sat while the kids did their school work,” Genner says. “Then it became more about entertaining at home.”
Rather than the freestanding, mobile drinks trolley that gained popularity among millennials in recent years, the new look bar is curated and integrated, with the occasional touch of glamour.
“It used to be we had the drinks trolley with bottles of whiskey and vodka but now we don’t want to see it all the time,” he says. “We have clients, for example, that love their gin and collect the bottles and they want a place to store them.”
Most recently, Genner created a pop-up bar in a kitchen in Sydney’s Alexandria that emerges from the kitchen benchtop, James Bond-style, at the touch of a button.
“Home automation is the next step,” he says. “We are fitting voice activation now so that you can say ‘hey Alexa, I’m thirsty’.”
The concealed nature of this new style of in-kitchen bar is also about increasing the functionality of the space within an open plan area over the course of the day.
“There is a touch of the nightclub about them,” Genner says. “When you are sitting in the lounge, you don’t want to see a kitchen — you want to see a beautiful piece of joinery. Materials are metallics, marble and smokey glass with LED lights with sensors that are really positioned to illuminate bottles.
“All those kinds of things make it special.”
Architect Carla Middleton says as footprints shrink, it just makes sense to create spaces with dual functionalities. She has created several spaces on tight sites for clients that are dedicated to easy drinks preparation, including an area under the stairs in her own home at Tamarama.
“It’s a combined coffee and bar area and it was the only thing my husband really wanted,” Middleton says. “We couldn’t do a cellar and this is central to the living and entertaining area that you can seal off when you are not entertaining.
“It’s a nice area when friends come over to set up and let your guests help themselves.”
Rather than creating a separate bar or mancave, a luxe mini version in a shared space like the kitchen also ensures that everyone feels welcome, including the cook. Whether it is concealed or not, for it to be successful, Middleton says a drinks station needs a few essentials.
“You want a good open benchtop, when you are entertaining, to serve as a cocktail station and then a sink big enough to have some ice in it,” she says. “A wine and beer fridge is also good, perhaps one of those under bench wine fridges, and then a separate fridge for soft drinks.”
While the materials and technology might have changed, Middleton points out that the idea of having a cocktail bar at home goes back some way.
“It’s not a new thing. We used to have a drinks trolley in my grandmother’s house,” she says. “It’s just transforming in its style and location.”
Here’s cheers to that.
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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