evin Carmody and Andy Groarke are now Wallpaper*
Handmade veterans. For the debut edition of the show,
back in 2010, the London-based architects created a
conceptual pavilion inspired by the staggering amount
of stitchwork that goes into a single Brioni suit. A few
years later, they created a contemporary take on the
bistro chair with furniture maker Joe Pipal, drawing
on their extensive restaurant design experience (the
chair has since gone into production and become
a fixture in spaces from Fernandez & Wells’ new Soho
café to a Maggie’s Centre in Liverpool).
This year, we called on the pair once again, asking
them to create a bar that could offer its own kind of
spiritual uplift. For the project, we also partnered with
Stolichnaya’s Elit vodka, a spirit built on a unique
mix of science and craft. Starting as Russian grain, it
is distilled three times before being mixed with artesian
well water in Riga, filtered through quartz sand and
freeze-filtered at -18°C, in a process unique to Elit.
Named after a series of works by El Lissitzky (and
an acronym for the Russian phrase ‘project for the
affirmation of the new’), the ‘Proun’ bar is a fitting
tribute to the artist. As a structure, it appears both
monumental and minimal. ‘Our starting point for
the project was to make a building in miniature,’ says
Groarke. ‘The image of this clustered form could be
very loosely interpreted as the abstract compositions
of Lissitzky’s constructivism.’
Designed to be approached from all sides, the fully
functional bar is also a modular design, which allows
it to be easily disassembled and reinstalled in different
venues: after Milan, Elit took it to Bilbao for the
World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony, and it is due
to appear in London later this year.
A cluster of tall, tightly stacked ingots of mill-
finished aluminium, the bar was produced in the sameTuscan workshop as the Brioni pavilion for Handmade
in 2010. The aluminium was left with a raw factory
finish, says Carmody, which gave a luminous quality
to its surfaces. Black marble was added to the bar
top to create a contrast between the stark modernity
of the totems and the warmer, more classic stone.
‘Carmody Groarke’s aesthetics – sleek, precise,
geometric – is something I would call “sophisticated
simplicity”,’ says Vadim Grigoryan, Elit’s creative
director, who worked closely with the architects
on the development of the project. ‘Like all great
architects, they are deep thinkers. We talked about
all the socioeconomic and anthropological context
of their practice – this intellectual approach is very
appealing in our often superficial age.’
As well as designing buildings, the architects have
produced temporary exhibitions (most recently, the
Barbican’s Bauhaus show), interiors, including a new
members’ room for London’s V&A, and temporary
projects, such as Carsten Höller’s Double Club. It’s
that background in striking architecture and creating
dynamic social spaces that made them an obvious
choice to rethink the crowded bar. ‘We imagine
the design as a standalone object that makes sense
in its own formal and material terms,’ says Groarke.
‘But we also must imagine the bar in use, as the
focal point of a social experience.’
The experimental and sculptural nature of the
bar created a focal point at our Handmade exhibition
in Milan, offering a radical change to the typical bar
dynamics: ‘Guests become active players or performers,
on a par with bartenders, and the bartending art
becomes transparent,’ says Grigoryan, who concludes:
‘I would call it “the bar as such”, an inquiry into the
nature of a spirits bar for the 21st century.’^ ∂
carmodygroarke.com; elitbystoli.comK
RIGHT, SKETCHES OF
THE ‘PROUN’ BAR, WHICH
WAS INSPIRED BY THE
WORK OF THE RUSSIAN
SUPREMATIST ARTIST
EL LISSITZKY
OPPOSITE, ARCHITECTS
KEVIN CARMODY AND
ANDY GROARKE IN THEIR
STUDIO IN LONDON’S
COVENT GARDEN104 ∑