Have you ever finished work on a Friday and felt like a glass of your favorite tipple simply won't cut it? Well soon you'll be able to have a whole roomful of it. The Alcoholic Architecture bar is a walk-in cocktail that lets guests breathe in a cloud of alcoholic mist. Alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream via the lungs and eyes.
Designed by Bompas & Parr, Alcoholic Architecture is described as the "world’s first alcoholic weather system for your tongue, where meteorology and mixology collide." It is based on the concept of scaling up a cocktail to an inhabitable size.
Bompas & Parr says that, having been run once previously in 2009, the idea has had six years of further development. Based next to the UK’s earliest gothic cathedral and on the site of an ancient monastery at London's Borough Market, the bar will open later this month and the drinks list will be entirely comprised of spirits and beers created by monks, including Chartreuse, Benedictine, Trappist beer and Buckfast.
Each guest will wear a cape with a hood to protect their clothes and hair from getting damp and smelling of alcohol. Powerful humidifiers are used to super-saturate the air with a cloud composed of fine spirits and mixers at a ratio of 1:3. Inside the chamber, a humidity of 140 percent means that visibility is reduced to less than a meter (3 ft).
The alcohol in the mist will be absorbed through the body's mucus membranes, the lungs and eyeballs. According to Bompas & Parr, visitors will need to consume 40 percent less alcohol in this way than if they were having a drink to feel the same effect due to the alcohol bypassing the liver. There are also said to be "gustatory (taste) and dietary benefits" to breathing alcohol rather than drinking it.
Bompas & Parr says it worked with respiratory scientists and chemists to calculate safe mist exposure times for visitors. Around 40 minutes in the chamber will equate to having a large drink and guests will be limited to a single one hour visit per day. It will also be possible to buy cocktails in liquid-format designed to complement the taste of the mist.
Alcoholic Architecture will open to the public on July 31. It will cost £12.50 (US$20) to enter and will remain open for six months.
Sources: Bompas & Parr, Alcoholic Architecture