While most hammams only have one or three rows of skylights, this venue boasts five. He adds, “This is the only surviving Arab bath with an integral decoration until now, the only known examples had paint just on the baseboards.”Įxcavations uncovered a total of 88 skylights in various sizes and shapes, including stars and octagons. “The drawings were made in red ocher on white, and large fragments were preserved on the walls and vaulted ceilings.” “The most important thing is that we realized the bath was completely painted, from top to bottom, with high-quality geometric decoration,” Jiménez tells El País. Now, archaeologists have revealed definitive evidence of the well-kept bathhouse, from its ornate geometric embellishments to its shaped skylights and tranquil paintings. Though popular lore indicates that a bathhouse once stood at the site, Jiménez and many other locals had written this claim off as a rumor, notes the Guardian. (The tapas bar opened in 1923.) He took care to hide and protect the historic structure, which fused Islamic architectural traditions with Roman bathing rituals, by covering its features with a layer of modern decoration, reports Jack Guy for CNN. We just had to follow the pattern of the skylights.”Īccording to Margot Molina of El País, architect Vicente Traver converted the public bathhouse, or hammam, into a hotel during the early 20th century. “t just couldn’t have been anything but a bath. “As soon as we saw one of the skylights, we knew what it was,” Álvaro Jiménez, one of the archaeologists brought in to investigate the find, tells the Guardian’s Sam Jones. But when workers began shaving away at plaster on the ceiling, they discovered an unexpected surprise: the star-shaped skylights of a 12th-century Islamic bathhouse. Guest rooms have the feel of an urban ryokan (Japanese inn) with wooden beds and natural materials while the permanent Bar Americano is where, one imagines, immaculately dressed guests snip cocktails or shots of Mezcal in the nicely neutral colour scheme, amid softly angled pieces of expensive furniture, rounded edges and mood lighting.Īlthough Bar Oppenheimer is a work of art, it is a fully functioning bar too, with the essence of the bar captured not just in its look but also in the menu, which includes Vodka Steins, Rehberger's own favourite drink.Last summer, the owners of Cervecería Giralda, a popular tapas bar in Seville, Spain, embarked on a long-delayed renovation of their almost 100-year-old establishment. The patterns are based on the concept of dazzle camouflage - a wartime tactic of using a busy surface design that made it more difficult for the enemy to pinpoint ships during surveillance, and which attracted the interest of artists, among them Picasso.īar Oppenheimer is a real contrast to the rest of the hotel.

One marked difference is that this edition has every surface is covered in eye-tricking geometric stripes that flick around in every direction, mostly using a monochrome palette with flashes of red and orange. The NY bar contains all the same furniture and interiors details as the original, from the lighting to the tall radiators. I'm there for the art fair and the bar, so the bar has to come dressed as a work of art.' I'm going to be in New York for a bit, so I'm able to pack up my favourite bar and take it with me. 'The way I look at it is like a suitcase. Bar Oppenheimer opened in mid-May to coincide with Frieze New York and was on show for just over two months. If its on-trend aesthetic doesn't allude strongly enough to its zeitgeist-capturing intentions then a quick look at the website will find blog posts on forthcoming cultural happenings from gigs to Jeff Koons' installations to Shakespeare performances. Although the hotel's architecture comes courtesy of New York-based Mexican architect Enrique Norten, principal of Ten Arqitectos, its European influence can felt immediately one arrives, with interiors by MCH Arnaud Montigny, a French firm best known for its work on the seminal French department store Colette. The temporary bar can be found at Hotel Americano, in Manhattan's Chelsea district. That's the tack that German artist Tobias Rehberger took when he designed the New York Bar Oppenheimer - in exactly the same size and proportions of its namesake in Frankfurt. What to do if you miss your local? Recreate it in another city of course. We take a trip around of recent bar and restaurant projects that show an imaginative use of materials and design

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