Design Parade, 5th International Festival of Interior Architecture
June 25 to November 13, 2021
Project Leader: Youri Kravtchenko
Ancien Évêché, Toulon
In 1965, interior architect Robert Haussmann designed the Kronenhalle Bar in Zurich for Gustav Zumsteg. This timeless establishment has retained its original design for over 50 years, transporting visitors from the city's hustle to an elegant, dark, and discreet interior adorned with masterpieces by Picasso, Miró, Chagall, and Braque, illuminated by Diego Giacometti's lamps. Developed by the students of the Master of Arts in Interior Architecture (MAIA) at HEAD – Genève, Learning from Kronenhalle revisits the nocturnal dimension of the bar for Design Parade 2021, with a particular focus on the original lamps and artificial lighting that define the place.
Since its inception, the Kronenhalle Bar has epitomized the classic American bar, offering a sophisticated atmosphere for socializing, and enjoying exceptional hospitality. Gustav Zumsteg's vision for the bar was "sans pareil," reflected in Haussmann's artful creation featuring green Morocco leather seats, mahogany-paneled ceilings, and Diego Giacometti's distinctive light fixtures. Five-armed alabaster light fixtures bathe the bar in moonlight. These elements inspired students' projects, iterating both the free-standing lamps on the bar and the suspended ones next to the window.
Diego Giacometti was mainly known for his collaboration with his brother Alberto and for his distinctive bronze furniture pieces. In Learning from Kronenhalle, his production is revisited and edited with a wider variety of materials, dissociating and reassociating form (or forms) with new materials and lighting solutions, including wood, metal, upholstery, and fabrics. The proposed collection becomes both the geometry of furniture pieces and the graphic design of new symbolic patterns for a new nocturnal environment. Questions of appropriation, edition, iteration, and recontextualization are embraced as defining the ethos of interior architecture, influenced both by its physical reality and by the images of the projects that have marked its history.
MAIA: Master of Arts in Interior Architecture (HEAD – Genève)
Head of Department: Javier Fernández Contreras
Scientific Deputy: Valentina de Luigi
Project Leader: Youri Kravtchenko
Assistant: Manon Portera
Students: Elsa Audouin, Marina Ezerskaia, Thibaut Krauer, Robin Delerce, Patrycia Pawlik
Photography: © HEAD–Genève, Design Parade
