Pop a champagne and how!

So, Guinness is celebrating its 250th Anniversary this year and they've decided to make a splash with it. Quite literally.

The company commissioned London based Jump Studios to repurpose a submarine, creating the world's first deep sea bar! Working in co-ordination with famed carpenter and designer Nicholas Alexander, Jump Studios has created this funky bar in the insides of the submarine. Designed to look like it was floating full of bubbles the team measured the interiors of the submarine and constructed the pre-fabricated interior shell in Alexander's London studio before assembling it in sub zero temperatures and then sinking the newly created bar deep into the Baltic Sea. While some of these prefabricated bubbles have been fit with LED lights, some have been left open to hold glasses and the like.

 Made to strict marine engineering guidelines, the designers had to take into account not just the unique interiors of the submarine but also the stringent guidelines regarding its daily mechanics and ventilation and fire safety. However, none of that seems to have impaired the signature playfulness of the Jump studio that is now stamped  on the world's first and only deep sea bar. 

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The walls are breathing!

Balcony at Dilston Grove

(copyright Ackroyd & Harvey)

It’s almost literally a temple of green. South East London’s Dilston Grove Art gallery used to once upon a time be a church. And today, it comes fairly close to being something of a living edifice. 

The Italian style church (formerly known as Clare College Mission Church) was the first concrete church to be built in England in the early 1900s. The derelict church has now been converted into an art gallery and boasts of grass walls that cover its interiors, courtesy Ackroyd & Harvey of London.  

Watering Dilston Grove -
(copyright Ackroyd & Harvey)

The austere exteriors of the church gave way to compelling interiors and the artists saw in them the potential to create something that could be a monumental art work. And so came about the grass interiors of Dilston Grove, when vision came together with clay, germinating grass seed, water and natural light; there was almost nothing that stop the creation of this living and breathing, literally, work of art.

Working in conjunction with sound artist and composer, Grame Miller the artists infused life of a unique kind in the decaying interiors of the building over a 3 week period. That it was a breathtaking sight for sore eyes, we have no doubt. Just as we’re sure it brought alive the walls in a way its original architects would never have thought of.   

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