Bompas & Parr’s Alcoholic Architecture arrives in Borough Market on 30th July, featuring a walk-in cloud of breathable cocktail. The installation is the world’s first alcoholic weather system for your tongue where meteorology and mixology collide.
Set in a Victorian building that was once the original home and offices of The Trustees of Borough Market, the bar takes over the basement – itself a former banana store for unripe fruit arriving from the West Indies – and will source many ingredients for its drinks list from Borough Market itself.
Breathe responsibly
The installation explodes drinks to the scale of architecture for a beautiful, inhabitable world that spatialises the world’s best cocktails and creates a fully immersive alcohol environment. The focus will be on the flavour sensation that occurs when fine art meets the world’s best bartending.
Guests will be asked to don special protective suits to enter. The cloud is entirely composed of fine spirits and mixer at a ratio of 1:3 and made using powerful humidifiers to super-saturate the air. Alcohol enters the bloodstream through the body’s mucus membranes: primarily the lungs but also the eyeballs.
With humidity at 140 per cent, there is so much alcohol in the air, you can see less than a metre but the high humidity level enhances flavour perception. And by breathing the cocktail, alcohol bypasses the liver allowing you to consume 40 percent less (with correspondingly reduced calories) to feel the same effect! Bompas & Parr has worked with respiratory scientists and chemists to calculate safe dwell times guests can remain in the cloud.
Once inside they will be able to order further cocktails from a menu that complements the taste profile of the breathable beverage.
The project builds on Bompas & Parr’s 2009 pop-up installation of the same name, though this will be open for a full six months.
A merry crew
A roistering, saucy and merry crew has collaborated with Bompas & Parr to realise the installation. Interiors are inspired by a collision between Miami Deco and the faux-medievalism of Jim Jarmusch’s Loudon in The Devils and augmented artwork by Tom Sewell. Staff uniforms are designed by Olivia Hegarty of Percival Clothing and combine the flair of the continental waiter with the ecclesiastical swagger of a dandified cleric. Sound design comes from Dom James, a man once described as the ‘Scriabin of Kennington’. The music playing in the bar is transmuted inside the cloud so it sounds like you are taking a journey to the centre of the glass – hear the ice tinkle, marvel at the sub-surface acoustic. Playlists are created by Nicholas Hadfield.
Maximal intensity of cocktail experience
Harry Parr, director of Bompas & Parr, comments: “With Alcoholic Architecture we are going for maximal intensity of cocktail experience. With every breath you take, notice a fresh botanical or flavour in the spirit that can be hard to discern in a regular drink. Taste the cloud, savour the sky.”
The full drinks list will be announced on the 14th July alongside the formulations for the first cloud.
For more information about Alcoholic Arch click here
For more information about Bompas & Parr click here