Sustainable ‘AFTER HOURS’ Bar opens…

Natural History Museum Basel, Switzerland

We were commissioned to research, develop and design a fully functional and sustainable bar for the “AFTER HOURS” event space at the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland.  The bar event space is approximately 125m2.

In conjunction and in support of the currently live main exhibition: ‘EARTH AT ITS LIMITS’.  The bar is open to the public at various times in the year when visitors can visit the museum at night for free and experience the unique atmosphere in the museum at night.

Rethink, Refuse, Reuse, Repair, Recycle, Recover – are the mantra’s of the exhibition of which we strictly adhered to in the development of the bar design.

To showcase that you don’t need to use new materials to create a considered aesthetically pleasing designed space as the bar was produced almost exclusively with reused and up cycled materials.

Considerable material research to identify how to up-cycle and reuse consumer and industry waste safely as material finishes and features within the bar concept design.

Developed the overall bar design to allow for all of the required construction for the bar, back bar, DJ booth, unitary, furniture and lighting from existing old elements with reused materials applied and or constructed from only upcycled materials.

Only utilising ready available waste products and or materials that were no longer in usage, sourced locally, at minimal cost and were provided for free from various organisations and companies.

– Bar constructed using old EU pallets, reusable vegetable crates and up cycled wood from another museums finished show exhibit

– Back bar manufactured using wood from an old dismantled skate ramp.

– Seating units made using old existing seat bases, with recycled content unfinished upholstery foam seat pads and painted using old paint.

– Rethink wall sculpture feature produced using up cycled cardboard tubes, old stock LED low energy lighting and FSC sourced marine ply.

– Utilised old existing paint stock for the graphic wall mural art, from old exhibitions where the paint isn’t likely to be used again and around ten years stock of old paint was used.

– Reused vintage maps too clad some old lamp shades to create the suspended lights over the bar.

– Used second hand shop old picture frames that were resprayed and had new graphic art imagery mounted within that hi-lights the issues the main exhibition is addressing.  All of the artistic images were also designed by our Creative Director, Jason Smith.

– Developed and designed a tessellated wall paper using recycled consumer waste paper shopping bags that can also be recycled post usage.

– Used some of the museum’s old stock maps to clad some old lamp shades in fluted cylinders of the rolled maps for above the bar.

– Utilised plastic and beer bottle lids, wine and Prosecco corks set in resin to create the tall bar tables.

– Clad the DJ booth in scratched and unusable vinyl records.

 

 

 

 

For further information please contact Jason Smith, Creative Director at UNLTD_XYZ.  jason@unltdxyz.com | +44 7956 982 636

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