Sam Bompas on Alcoholic Architecture

Sam Bompas and Harry Parr first started meddling with flavours and food back in 2007 when they launched their company making unique jelly structures based on iconic buildings. But it isn’t just about the food.

The pair works by a philosophy focussed on the surrounding atmospheres and feelings that complement their culinary delights and have been involved in some amazing experiential projects from the flavoursome fireworks used in London for New Year's Eve to special scratch and sniff cards for the opening of the London Games in 2012.

Their latest project, however, has seen them launch their first physical bar space and once again the concept is a unique one. Opened on 30 July and running until at least the end of January 2016, Alcoholic Architecture is based at Borough Market and boasts a breathable weather cloud of gin and tonic that intoxicates through the lungs and eyes.

Below, Bompas tells us what it's all about, including why they chose to open at the London foodie hot spot and the importance of the experiential medium for the modern consumer.

Tell us about the concept behind your new bar at Borough Market…

At Bompas & Parr we’ve conquered countless temporary events and installations. From cooking with lava to hosting the New Year’s Eve fireworks for London for a quarter of a million people – where you could taste the fireworks in the sky! We’ve been hungry to do a longer project that more people can come to for some time now. This bar is our wild fantasies made reality.

The focus is on the flavour sensation that occurs when fine art meets the world’s best bartending. Guests are asked to don special protective suits to enter. The cloud is entirely composed of fine spirits and mixer at a ratio of 1:3 and made using powerful humidifiers to super-saturate the air. Alcohol enters the bloodstream through the body’s mucus membranes: primarily the lungs but also the eyeballs.

By breathing the cocktail, alcohol bypasses the liver allowing you to consume 40 per cent less (with correspondingly reduced calories) to feel the same effect! Bompas & Parr has worked with respiratory scientists and chemists to calculate safe dwell times that guests can remain in the cloud.

How important was the location for this first physical bar; did it take long to scout and tell us about the process?

I was born in Southwark in Guy’s Hospital and christened in Southwark Cathedral – the adjacent building to Alcoholic Architecture. My first job was working as a researcher for the local MP Simon Hughes and Harry [Parr] and I set up Bompas & Parr with the sole aim of being able to do something at Borough Market (the site of the installation). So it very much feels like we are on home turf!

Ingredients used throughout will be sourced from Borough Market. The site of the bar, One Cathedral Street (built c. 1897) was the original home and offices of The Trustees of Borough Market. The basement where the bar is located was historically used as a banana store, where the unripe bananas from the West Indies were stored after unloading from the nearby port. Bananas hold the key.

And it was also the site of an ancient monastery that has provided the goad to creativity for the drinks and decor. The set design for the interior is a modern take on the medieval theme. Picasso once said that good taste is the enemy of creativity. We love bad taste. It is very playful and polarising. So with this we are really plumbing the depths. In many ways we are creating a modern version of a tiki bar.

Anyway the wave of identikit Brooklyn Retro burger joints that has flooded London with their seemingly authentic smoked meats, craft beers and ‘artisanal pickles’ is no less false. The style just happens to be fashionable and despite the swaggering earnestness of endeavour it is still all bogus.

At least we are tapping well-researched, local monastic and market history for our inspiration, even if we are driving it into the strange and lurid realms of imagination. And it’s enervating to take fresh and unusual starting points for reference. Medieval history mixed with Miami neon is a compelling goad to creativity.

How important is the experiential medium becoming in today’s world for the modern consumer?

It’s incredibly important to give people compelling stories and this is what Alcoholic Architecture does – visitors are the heroes of their own adventure. Within the bar they can experience alcohol in a totally new way, drink from a skull made from a human chalice and visit the leucastic albino python in the ladies loos – a rare genetic varietal that is entirely white with blue eyes.

We also designed the entire installation from the perspective of the camera phone so that visitors come away with epic Instagram feeds of their amazing lives.

You’re in the business of creating memorable moments and unique experiences; how rewarding is the feeling and how do you stay inspired?

By spending our week creating memorable moments for people we get to have a strange and wonderful lifestyle ourselves though it is a constant onslaught. Our studio manager recently got worried that the studio was burning down as there was a thick smoke filling the offices. Our French intern nonchalantly said “don’t worry, we’re just cooking bacon with plasma” (the same matter that stars are made of). It is regularly absurd but wonderful.

Recently I’ve had meetings with Nano-Racks, NASA’s commercial partners about microgravitational food experiments in deep space, an ethanobotanist about tracking down strange fruits in the sweaty jungles of Ghana and even a micro-biologist about chopping DNA into viruses to make humans immortal.

As well as sparky collaborations we draw a fair bit of inspiration from history. Bags of time is spent in the London Library checking historic cookery books - Alexis Soyer is one of our food idols. He was a Victorian version of Jamie Oliver, with books, magazines, products, restaurants and celebrity fans. He also created the world's most fantastic restaurant which included ice caves with stuffed foxes, mirror chambers, London's first cocktail bar, a medieval banqueting hall for 2000 and a grotto which you had to go through a waterfall to enter.

We keep our eyes open for technological, scientific, biological and other discoveries that can enchant our world through clever cross-pollination.

There are also many other chefs and artists we like and are inspired by though most of them are dead! These include the imperial Fernand Point, the rambunctious Peter Langan, showman P.T. Barnum and illustrator Emma Rios (the last is living!).

What do you hope people take away from the Alcoholic Architecture experience?

A smile on their face and a tale to tell which means they can dominate the conversation at the next dinner party they attend.

You can find out more about Alcoholic Architecture and buy tickets here. To read about another immersive experience Bompas & Parr was involved with, for Johnny Walker, click here.