The bar develops beyond a gathering place in Max Radford’s latest collaboration. Open for business (and drinks) during the recent Frieze Week in London (and now moving to its next destination in Paris, during the city's Art Basel), the Limen Bar at Oranj was commissioned by the design gallerist and interior designer as a temporary space and designed by CLLC, the newly established Parisian studio led by Charlotte Taylor and Pauline Leprince.
For a week, CLLC’s Limen bar took residence at east London’s Oranj natural wine bar, exploring the communal and social space as the centre of a bigger cultural conversation.
Pauline Leprince, left, and Charlotte Taylor, right
It's a project conceived as a creative collaboration, which expanded into a living space. Eschewing conventional exhibition models, Radford and CLLC opted instead for a design that fulfils a function and creates a conceptual and aesthetic moment where spatial design, furniture, objects, wine, food and sound meet. Aptly, the bar takes its name from the Latin word for threshold, becoming a space of transition, a visual moment between inside and outside.
The bar was created in collaboration with PS Lab for lighting, and sound elements by Mateo Garcia Audio. It also includes satellite objects and furniture from some of Radford's collaborators, among them Lewis Kemmenoe and Eddie Olin. Kemmenoe's timber lamps laid with aluminium elements were a continuation of his explorations in metal and patchwork, while for Olin, the project involved creating a series of bar stools from raw steel I-beams with a black-stained ash seat.
The newly commissioned objects, Radford explains, are imagined to respond to the behaviours and gestures usually associated with a bar: leaning, perching and gathering, serving, cooling, carrying and lighting.
CLLC also created glassware, continuing the geometric language they devised for the bar.
The Limen bar itself features a symmetrical form that nods to a contemporary interpretation of postmodern aesthetics, and its materials were conceived for ease of assembly, disassembly and transport. Appearing solid and hefty, the bar is in fact made of what the designers describe as 'imitation surfaces', reflecting the aesthetic of stone and metal with material lightness. 'Materials conventionally associated with weight and longevity become lighter, thinner and more theatrical,' reads a note accompanying the project.
Thanks to this approach, the bar is conceived to travel to different cities for further activations, following the creative calendar's most crucial moments of the year.
The Limen Bar will next land in Paris, 21-24 October, 10 Villa Riberolle, 75020 Paris
