Bike bar

Text via Artichoke:

Be careful when placing your gin & tonic on the bar. A bicycle might drive over it, carrying a visitor of the Design Biennale Experimenta 2008 out into the city of Amsterdam. Start of a tour along all things design is the Lounging Space; headquarters of the festival, ticket desk and central info point that doubles as a bar. One of the main events of the more than a month long festival was the Experimenta bike tour: a route along several pieces of art and design temporarily placed in public space throughout the city of Amsterdam. In that case there’s no other means of transport than a bicycle. Obviously the already multi-headed Lounging Space had to host the rental of the necessary bikes.

“To experience the whole immensely large space and turn the start of the tour into a theatrical moment in the spotlight, participants had to ride their bike over a broad and long catwalk that circles the room and ends in the street,” explains maker Marcel Schmalgemeijer (1968). The platform is wide enough to be used as coffee table and info desk at the same time. It was a great solution to fill the space. At the same time the concept embraces the main theme “Urban Play” of this fifth edition of Experimenta, the prestigious bi-annual expo dedicated to design, culture, architecture, and creativity that origins in Lisbon, Portugal. “I thought it would be fun if you could bike through the room on a bike lane as high as a table. So that one could have a sip of his/her coffee and read a newspaper while someone drives by at a meter high.” Thus Schmalgemeijer with Suzan Jorritsma attached lineair tl-lights wrapped in rainbow colours to the 68 columns that hold up the roof in the 1000 square meter abandoned office. An 80 meters long wooden ramp spirals through the space, starting as a bike parking at 100 centimeters of height, lowering into a 70 centimeters high infodesk, bar, reading table and then of you go, through the door and onto the street.

The theatrical gesture of putting the participant on a platform is not uncommon for Marcel Schmalgemeijer, spatial designer. After studying at the Design Academy in Eindhoven he moved towards scenography where lighting, sound, costumes and decor became his tools. “The theatre is more abstract, I like that. You can build a space starting from form, colour, material and light,” says Schmalgemeijer, ”And you‘re free from practical demands like having to produce something that is both weatherproof and hooliganproof.” Experts honour his environments because they can be played by both actors and public. As was the case in this Lounging Space: during a fashion show the catwalk was used by professional models in a more traditional way.
The bike bar is a literal translation of the Urban Play theme. Where most interventions took place in the urban space, here the urban scene is brought inside and made into a playful game that makes you smile.

Via: Artichoke magazine

Text: Ingeborg van Lieshout