Miranda
Vienna, Austria
Cocktail Bar
Completion July 2015
Miranda was born from both pragmatic and nostalgic impulses. When our architectural practice relocated to a larger space, rather than give up our old address – a lovely storefront on the Esterhazygasse – we decided to transform it into a small cocktail bar. The bar opens to the street, revealing a pale color palette of greens, pinks, blues and yellows. The room is dominated by long, green granite bar at counter height, allowing guests to feel as if they were part of the drink –mixing alchemy. The industrial herringbone oak flooring was left intact and references the space’s original use as a woodshop at the turn of the 20th century. Plush leather stools surround the bar and three small round tables along the façade. The façade is organized around four arched openings, each with glass doors that open to the street. With the exception of a large illustration featuring a dense jungle scene, the walls, partitions, bar counter and lighting fixtures are reduced to single colors, creating a playful overlapping of color planes. Polished, perforated stainless steel panels are clad around the bar below the stone counter and reappear in the bathrooms and exterior signage. Three platforms composed of metal flooring and powder-coated steel mesh create a terraced garden along the street. The bar pays homage to tropical modernism, to clean lines and vibrant colors, but also nods at local design precedents such as Josef Frank’s illustrative fabrics and Adolf Loos’s use of chromatic stone. With Miranda we hint at the tropics while staying firmly rooted in Vienna.
Location: Vienna. Austria
Principal use: Cocktail Bar
Total floor area: 70 m2
Number of stories: 1
Design Team: Chieh-shu Tzou, Gregorio S. Lubroth
Photos by Atelier Olschinsky