Wake Bar | Salone Del Salon

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Wake Bar | Salone Del Salon

Information

  • Completion year: 2021
  • Gross Built up Area: 160 sqm
  • Project Location: Zhengzhou
  • Country: China
  • Design Team: Zheng Weibang, Yang Jing
  • Clients: Zhang Yi
  • Photo Credits: INSPACE
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Excerpt: Wake Bar is a café designed by an Interior Design firm Salone Del Salon. Wake Bar adopts a narrative spatial language and dramatic lighting art with precise positioning and differentiated designs to introduce an immersive atmosphere.

Project Description

[Text as submitted by the Architects] Socializing spaces with distinct features are gaining increasing popularity among young people. Wake Bar adopts a narrative spatial language and dramatic lighting art with precise positioning and differentiated designs to introduce an immersive atmosphere. It explores to create a sense of belonging for urban citizens, breaks the boundaries of different circles and strikes a resonance between the space and the soul.

© INSPACE

Inside & outside

Located in a creative industrial park transformed from an old factory on the west outskirt of Zhengzhou, Wake Bar greets passers-by with its red brick exterior walls and further attracts people’s attention with a staircase that leads to the second floor. Through creative design, it induces people’s curiosity to explore what’s behind the red wall.

© INSPACE

In “The Peach Blossom Spring”, a well-known story written by ancient Chinese poet Tao Yuanming, when the protagonist, a fisherman, enters a grotto that leads to an ethereal village, the story goes as follows: “At the beginning, it was narrow. Only one man can pass through. As I continued to explore, it became bright open all at once.” That’s also how people feel when they step into Wake Bar.

© INSPACE

Walking upwards along the staircase, visitors will bump into an eye-catching signboard. Before they even know it, the guests are shrouded in a vibe created by the lighting, which as if brings them into an “ethereal land of time and space” hidden in the city. With the shadows it makes, the lighting instantly intoxicates the guests even before the alcohol does. 

© INSPACE

Immersive & interactive

Design practice SALONE DEL SALON reconstructed the spatial system from a brand-new perspective. The circulation route fits into the attribute of the space as a bar. Both a sense of openness and visual layering are well embodied at the same horizontal line. Bar counter, scattered seats, booths and private rooms are all arranged in the bar. The glass partitions effectively create a flowing and open visual experience. 

© INSPACE

A tens-of-meters-long bar counter and a liquor cabinet are situated at the centre of Wake Bar. Also, as the spiritual centre of the bar, the counter provides enough space for the interaction between bartenders and guests. Carefree talks, unrestrained emotional expressions, and laughter all happen against the background of the emerald liquor cabinet. Ordering a cocktail glass and listening to a bartender talking about the story behind the drink, the guests will allow themselves to get lost as if on a gentle spring night.

© INSPACE

Retro poetic aesthetics

Lighting is also the uppermost choice to create atmospheres. The designers boldly redefined the realistic scenario of the bar. An installation placed under a red light, where a golden ball hangs up in midair with winding vines, and a golden abstract painting against a green background, improve the space’s sense of art.

© INSPACE

Different light layers are reflected through the mirrored material, which glistens and slowly sends out a sense of mysterious beauty. The boundary between soberness and drunkenness thus disappears in a tipsy vibe. The combination of leather, metal and marble reveals a metaphysical nostalgia for the old days, while linear light delivers a sense of technology. The two styles form a poetic connection between the past and the future.

© INSPACE

Social + art gathering place

The project interprets the social needs of modern urbanites through spatial expressions. Everything, including the taste, the environment, the style and the artworks, is presented in just the right way to satisfy the aesthetic appetites of guests as they step into the space.

© INSPACE

The bar allows young people to unleash their pressure with an expressive style. Meanwhile, it provides a destination for them to soothe their nerves and socialize without burden while enjoying the pleasure of drinking.

© INSPACE

In addition to being a bar, this project is also a place for artistic and creative exchanges, just as its name indicates — “wake up” and “get started”. In the future, the space, which naturally carries a cultural function, will present more niche art exhibitions and popular cultural products to echo today’s evolving lifestyles through constantly innovated and diversified forms.

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