Shake it up: colour and light define the Naked and Famous bar in Seville

While designing a new cocktail bar in Spain's Seville, Madrid-based LUCAS Y HERNÁNDEZ - GIL Arquitectos started off with a simple question, “Can a unique and specialised space cause a more intense cocktail drinking experience?” The Spanish architects' aim with the design of Naked and Famous Bar was to transcend the traditional imagery of cocktail clubs. Therefore, at Naked and Famous, they explored a design approach that translates the literal essence of a cocktail—a combination of different spirits, ingredients and flavours—into experiential interior spaces. “The project is conceived as a sum of fragments. Through crossed views and motion between the different rooms is how this space is truly perceived: meaning through mixture,” share the architects.

Located in a singular patio house near a local cathedral, the cocktail bar, while trying to go beyond traditional styles, hosts a modern space in a historic location and old building. The concept of 'mixture' is seen in the space right from its location. Influenced by the typology of the building, the spatial arrangement of the bar also follows the idea of sequenced spaces. Inside the building, ‘mixture’ is harmoniously dealt with by keeping light and colour as the protagonists. As Cristina Domínguez Lucas and Fernando Hernández-Gil of LUCAS Y HERNÁNDEZ - GIL Arquitectos mention, the inspiration to work with light and colour in the interior design comes from the works of Dan Flavin and James Turrell, and Milton Avery’s work on the boundary of figurative and abstract scenes.

A metallic room from the entrance of the building leads one to the ‘pink sauce’ where seating, wall, floor and ceiling are drenched in the saturated tone of pink. The room diverges into the 'laboratory room,' which is the core space of the project and the blue room. The laboratory room, in a mint green colour, hosts the preparation and serving functions of the cocktail bar. The 'blue room,' with more seating spaces, is defined as “a counterpoint of silence and shadows.” At the coming together of a colour palette with saturated tones of pink, blue and mint green, the different spaces become not only a visual experience but a journey of varied emotions guided by metallic reflections and dramatic lighting.

With defined functions, each room of the cocktail bar adopts a unique theme and imparts a different experience - like being inside a cocktail shaker, like the colourful swirl of different flavours, like the changing emotions of consuming a cocktail and like a joyful mixture of celebrations. Every space of Naked and Famous has something for every visitor.

Reminding the visitors of the influences of Flavin is the artistic lighting design. Long cylindrical rod-like lights placed on the wall, aligning them in the direction of the wall pattern, are the main source of lighting. Furthermore, this same cylindrical light is played with to create hanging lights and wall art of light in the laboratory. Turrell—one of the founders of the mid-1960s California Light and Space Movement—has his own forms that intensified the experience of sight and perception. At Naked and Famous, the transitions between the colours, lighting and the opening that separate the spaces extend a subtle node to Turrell’s explorations.

"Dusk and night time, a chromatic and light duality that is interrupted by metalised shines of aluminium and steel. A game of contraries is also expressed in the materials of the project. This space (Naked and Famous cocktail bar) is built from sensitive and constructive premises. As a result - it is a functional scenography.

The design of the space comes from the abstract configuration of the rooms, the space's possibilities of representation and performance, as well as from technical solutions in search for better acoustics, with the direct expression of materials. Materials such as acoustic foam, wood, stone wool panels, aluminium and undulated metal sheets generate textures in relation with arabesques of Sevillian tiles and dialogue with the original forge elements of the building," shares LUCAS Y HERNÁNDEZ - GIL Arquitectos.

Bringing the mixture of colours, light, and textures together is the furniture design by Kresta Design. The geometric designs of their Fausto Collection, inspired by shapes of kitchen utensils and the customised pedestal table, resembling a cocktail glass, comprise the main furniture of the bar.

In the region where the Seville Cathedral stands adoring the characteristic features of Moorish, Renaissance and Gothic architecture, the Naked and Famous cocktail bar portrays a space-time tunnel connecting a vibrant future to the ornamented past. Though the interior, in all its completeness, contradicts the exterior facade of the building, it somehow remains inside that shell like a well-kept secret that only those who seek shall see. It doesn’t force its foreign existence amid the heritage city of Seville, but at the same time, it remains in the old patio house waiting to make a presence when needed. While the architects create a bar that doesn’t condone traditional bar architecture, it also holds with it part of the city—in form of the Sevillian tile, the relation to the original building and the play of sequence spaces—reminding one of the engravings you find in Seville, NO8DO. It means 'no me ha dejado' and is translated to 'It (Seville) has not left me.' Even when the bar design remains distant from the architecture of the city, in parts of the space, somewhere you can find subtle influences of Seville.