Wallpaper* SodaStream: Stockholm Lock In

International visitors of Stockholm’s Furniture & Light Fair during Stockholm Design Week know that they only have to turn on the tap in their hotel room bathrooms to get grand cru quality mineral water. The H20 that flows freely from the Arctic glaciers into domestic faucets is as good, fresh, pure, cool and clean as pretty much anything they can pay for from the minibar. Add bubbles and you won’t be able to tell it from Perrier...or the local Ramlösa.

So snowy Stockholm seemed like a good place to kick off our series of Wallpaper* SodaStream Lock In Parties – New York, London and Milan are already in our social diaries for the coming year. The plan is to get in sync with the global design fair agenda, providing fizz, effervescence, cocktails and good times for a select guest list of city visitors and local creative talent. Deejays, spirits and musical entertainment will be locally sourced; cocktails influenced by indigenous flavours and spices; and venues atypical and of architectural note.

For the Stockholm event, Wallpaper* and SodaStream chose Absolut Vodka’s recently renovated Spritmuseum on the capital’s waterfront. The work of Lomar Arkitekter, it is a fantastic conversion of an 18th-century boat house.

With SodaStream’s pop-up bar fixtures in place, banks of shiny new machines getting busy fizzing the local water, and live music from local Swede-grime star Elliphant, SodaStream designer Yves Behar was put in charge of the bespoke cocktail menu. Cucumber Heat vodka lime soda anyone?

The venue also houses Absolut’s Art Collection, which includes pieces by the likes of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst and Ed Ruscha. The artworks may be the daily attraction upstairs at Stockholm’s Spritmuseum but on Wednesday night, at the debut of the Wallpaper* SodaStream Lock In party series, some very handsome guests made a proper exhibition of themselves downstairs too.