Marcos Catalan: Lexington Bar, Muntaner 108, Barcelona
Lexington Bar: Marcos Catalán, back to the photo. (Photo: Jaume Prat)
99% of the content of this blog is written in bars. Project in bars. I contests in bars. Every morning I can go to Catalunya in Sant Cugat bar (next to the station), very little refurbished des of the 30 that until the past two Januarys, seemed to hold back because of tough stains, marble tables, Thonet chairs umpteenth imitation , horizontal paneled woodwork. Always make cold tapas are nothing special and some summers they serve you beer is not cold at all. I feel comfortable there. The noise of the bars helps me think. I concentrated. The talks, the sound of coffee or bottles crashing into the boxes of beer, shots that open the refrigerator under the bar, entry and exit of customers, observe how the customers behave, their body language, gestures, looks. It is a world. Is almost the world. So when, late last year, I had the opportunity to meet with Marcos Catalán and ask to tell me one of his works for publication here, I offered the Lexington bar, I was delighted.
Photo: Eugeni Pons
Having found out where he was, one afternoon, before dinner at the Out of China, restaurant is a few yards down on the sidewalk, went for a Dry Martini earlier. I instantly felt comfortable, and this feeling before analysis, this opportunity to explain (before explaining it to others, including Mark himself) why I feel good about a place, and to investigate what role does architecture in all this, is one of the most interesting questions I've ever done in this blog.
Photo: Jaume Prat
Days later, making a beer with Mark in the bar, I asked him to tell me. Interestingly, the architect who has done a tell it when you have opinion about it. The first concept (and almost the only) that was used was the order. For him, the Lexington is (even now) a local ground, complicated, which had in order to use. I looked at the walls and noticed that, almost as if he had X-ray eyes, he saw what was happening after all: here a dividing, the goal here, there a home. There was a partition. Then, empty the room, wrapping continuously with a wooden base to 2.06 in height, paint the upper walls of gold and renovate the façade. There.
parallel question: what architects do not speak when they talk about architecture? I imagine that Mark spoke of his concerns. Also what he took. But this work is not so, or remotely. The Lexington speech, above all, inspiration. It has been designed with the nose, based on seeking sensations. I do not know if, when he took his own life, it is these that the author sought. I know he is surprised at some points, disagree with others and, I imagine, pleased with the outcome. It is to be, as it has achieved the most difficult: to create an environment.
Photo: Jaume Prat
It's fun walking through there, move and look at the various users, couples, groups of friends. Almost everything is served are alcoholic beverages, beer, gin and tonics, wine, cocktails some other clueless: do not do bad Margaritas, and Dry Martini can drink a good meeting point. At night the lighting is dim, low. The dark color of the linings around you. The bar is at the right distance from the tables. It's nice.
Why it starts precisely with this notion of order. We get a huge glass. We found some lamps attached, they get whoever is behind it look like a shadow. This light separates inside from outside in a subtle, warm. Want to enter the place but who is not so promiscuously in contact with the outside world as one can possibly be in a more conventional bar closed with glass, where you seem constantly on the verge of hitting the pedestrians, who never know whether to greet or not . The first table is low and is served by four seats. It is round and it creates its own space irrespective of the crystal.
plant. Drawing: Marcos Catalán
You go, immediately covering dark stained pine, to 2.06, involving all local. Marcos I defined it as a U, but not really this: is more complex. It is impossible to perceive all the work together, but anyone who has not seen the interior environment intuit that also has the same type of coating. The perception of the true magnitude is replaced by the notion of continuity. On the base is a wall painted gold. This I also was described as a U, but in reality, is discontinuous because the local has a tremendous variation in height, meters. The entrance and the rear area are almost double height, while the connection is little more than 2.06 meters high this socket. As you enter the left hand side, a continuous wood bank serves a few square tables. At the end there is no bank. On the right the bar, separated from the sideboard for the area which provides the first panel. Then a staircase leads to the toilets and a store. Next to a hallway to another room condice. The corridor will be expanded to include another table with two more seats. The back room is lit (and amplified virtually) through a courtyard, surrounded by pine wooden benches that serve the tables, which follows the perimeter. The center is empty. And is (again): we have local ordered. From here, the sensations.
section. Drawing: Marcos Catalán
Marcos Catalán, from work to work has revealed two key skills here, simply explode and characterize the project: furniture and lights it better. Socket, banks, few fixed members. Tables: Simple, right color, the more square, dotted with round tables where you want to create a singular point. Expands and compresses the space to enjoy. What makes it riveting or continuous when it suits him. Chairs: Eiffel Chairs Eames designed by marriage (we can not agree more, my own studio is moble with wire-chairs of the same architects, the version with all metal legs of these chairs). The Eiffel Chair with wooden legs, and relate well to the pine floor. To highlight the pavement walking Mark showed me, and proudly remarked sound. For it is essential the creaking of floorboards, the muffled footsteps, the feeling at once domestic and poaching, good architecture is perceived by ear.
Photo: Eugeni Pons
The seats: Copenhagen. Second-hand markets. Specifically, the master Wenger, Hans Wenger. We buy four of their seats and placed in the entrance, like a manifesto, as a garnish. And how comfortable they are, by God. Two more seats second hand, these designer unknown, woven straw, serving the small aisle space.
photo: Eugeni Pons
... and lighting. Lighting is the key feature of the bar. Subtle, concentrated on the tables, creating islands of light that make you focus only on who got ahead. Surrounding this, barely a little more than a dim light illuminates the bar rotates and gives the general environment. It is possible to move easily around the room until you reach one of the places to be, which is des where you can enjoy the place. Each individual wants to be different, intimate. The diffuse light caused by a recessed downlights in the ceiling to give a highly concentrated light directly on the table, but away from them, is gold tinted walls, and nuanced, even by the various bottles that are placed in Shelves in this wall. On this, the exceptions. Apart from the general system that works, Marcos Catalán introduced anecdotes, isolated episodes, accumulation, guidelines and qualifies this general environment. In the front of the bar there are two lamps Bracket by Achille Castiglioni. I can not hide that this is one of my favorite lamps, which have placed if I could. I have four, actually: two at home, two in my studio. The lamp lights up my side of the bed is a parenthesis which I replaced the bulb causes, 150W, 60W one, I have directed against the wall and creates a soft light, pleasant, perfect for reading. Catalan the focus from des ground of half comfortable height, leaving the original bulb 150W, as part of the light is lost from the outside, making, also, local claim. On the east are also some tube lights of Eileen Gray, a light pipe (not killed with the name), a vertical fluorescent color with a very cold temperature (ie, which gives a warm light: the color temperature works in reverse of perception when it is warmer cooler is light) with a black and chrome housing. On one side of the first environment, Mark has arranged a round table Eiffel served by four chairs and lighted by a lamp Coderch, one of their favorites. These sets, these environments-within-a-room, as if they were Russian dolls are what makes the place work. And more: in some cases this may contradict the standard without problems. This is the case of the connecting corridor between the two environments, that at some point, it expands enough to fit a table with two chairs above. The black coating as a light well. Hovering over them, a standing lamp Tolomeo (there is one thing that does not serve these lamps?). And beneath our feet, a mirror under, as a kind of base, which rises just over two feet and extends out of the way the virtual space. With portrait of Le Corbusier included. Asked For this, Catalan said something like that was difficult for users of this table would feel comfortable and that was the way to go. No more.
Photo: Jaume Prat
Photo: Jaume Prat
Photo: Jaume Prat
When
Marcos asked him information item, it happened to me, a part of the plans that I asked (drawn with the clean graphics that I like), a series of photos that had been used as reference. There was mixed, photos Four Seasons Restaurant (located at the base of Builging Seagren, Mies van der Rohe, designed by Philip Johnson), the American Bar of Adolf Loos (perhaps a top reference for any architect who likes the interior design) and a whole being and premises anonymous Parisian bars, bistros with a long history, full of Vivendi, place where, apparently, has not involved an architect or where, if he did, he has been forgotten and buried under layers and layers of use, varnish, patinas from the smoke and grease and paint on this for decades. Places where you can relax, where you feel comfortable, where the union of domesticity customers, owners who have taken up the place, experience, fun waiters or edges. If tables utterance.
For some strange reason it costs more in many places designed that in the magazines. Places where it seems that these experiences are out of place. Locals do not seem to be able to adapt and evolve, all sequins, chrome and geometry imposed even people who are out of place, as dedicated vandals messing chairs. Locals seem to have to colonize, break a little, send down furniture and dirty with some good tomato juice thrown against a wall to begin to make sense. Places where I do not know why it never used to happen until the third change of masters, it destroys almost everything except what matters to begin work. That's when they end up as revolving bar niguiris salmon run by an immigrant from the inside of Canton.
Bar Marsella
London Bar
The Four Seasons: architect Philip Johnson.
The Lexington is not imposed. All this design effort, the rule with its exceptions, the episodes, which makes the building is alive, is complemented, is imposed, can be read in multiple layers, the first of which, indolent, playful, is made of pure sensation without intellectualizing, and allows space to live without thinking about it. Congratulations: the architecture creates environments that already do for themselves, the place has a life that allows you to collect stories, pictures golden patina on the smokers they are not needed to begin to have sill.
Photo: Jaume Prat
PS: I've always hated (personal hobby) when you have a list of references allegedly have been used to project a local. And not because there is no harm in it, but because 90% of the time is completely false. When not simply be transformed into a kitchen, a way of tackling the project. Mark gave me a reference to those that immediately makes me tense: a beautiful picture of Rothko with the dark bottom and top shooting gold. This time reference seduced me, and I found very interesting the passage of this pasta perimeter matérica imprecise mechanics cladding coating for parts and recurrent painted. I said so in an email, and the answer made me laugh. After the laughter I had to applaud: the painting of Rothko was not so, it was a sketch of work that had been developed as part project material. In the return mail was indeed a Rothko painting that he found later with the same colors. It was not a reference, but the same result by two different paths. And besides, you can take a gin and tonic at the end of the process.
Box
Mark Rothko
Sketch of work for the Lexington Bar Marcos Catalán .
Catalan Thanks to Mark for his interest and Eugeni Pons for the photos.
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