{"id":54827,"date":"2026-04-24T07:45:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/54827\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T07:45:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T07:45:55","slug":"when-horror-artist-hr-giger-designed-his-own-bar-in-switzerland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/54827\/","title":{"rendered":"When horror artist HR Giger designed his own bar in Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"When<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Museum HR Giger \/ Kedar Misani)<\/p>\n

Fri 24 April 2026 8:00, UK <\/p>\n

You can thank Swiss artist HR Giger for unleashing on the world cinema\u2019s greatest ever monster<\/a> to haunt the silver screen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to overstate just what an impact Alien made on movie audiences back in 1979. Draped in director Ridley Scott\u2019s thick and claustrophobic atmosphere, the sci-horror\u2019s detailing of the Nostromo spaceship crew\u2019s encounter with a hostile extraterrestrial owed everything to Giger\u2019s conceptual vision. A humanoid mass of biomechanical threat with a phallic head and slavering double-jaw, the creature\u2019s Lovecraftian lurk among the industrial crevices of the ore refinery still looks captivatingly terrifying nearly 50 years on.<\/p>\n

It was all there in Necronom IV. The original precursor to the alien\u2019s eventual realisation, Giger\u2019s airbrushed nightmares of ghoulishly enmeshed flesh and metal, packed with sexual and violent undercurrents, offered Scott and the team the chance to make an unforgettable mark on the age-old movie monster picture. Giger\u2019s work, however thrilling Alien is, can often veer into the tacky.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s brilliance, from the early Dune concept art for Alejandro Jodorowsky\u2019s doomed adaptation to Dead Kennedys\u2019 self-sodomising poster with 1985\u2019s Frankenchrist<\/a>, then there\u2019s the daft end like the schlocky Species designs and a slew of rubbish album covers, Debbie Harry\u2019s KooKoo and Steve Stevens\u2019 Atomic Playboys, the worst offenders.<\/p>\n

Still, when hitting that surreal bullseye, Giger could excavate magic from his uniquely dark ether. Could such unsettling flair extend to a drinking establishment? He\u2019d tried once before. A Giger Bar was attempted in Tokyo in the late 1980s, but was disavowed by the artist when, to his horror, the production team had designed the interior based on preliminary sketches over his final submissions. Giger ensured any future bar wouldn\u2019t make the same mistake.<\/p>\n

First officially opening its doors in 1992 in his hometown of Chur, then another in Gruy\u00e8res, Switzerland, attached with his bespoke museum in 2003, Giger truly unveiled his authorised bars befitting his exact architectural supervision.<\/p>\n

Painted in his signature monochrome colours, bony spines seem to sprout from the floor, acting as the supporting column to both the building and the strange colossal entity you\u2019re sat in the belly of, sipping a pale ale. Elsewhere, Giger\u2019s disquieting \u2018baby wall\u2019 can be spotted in full physical manifestation, as well as the high-backed Harkonnen Chairs from his Dune concepts.<\/p>\n

The Giger Bars may well try to promote the ostensible cerebral underpinnings to the whole affair, \u201cthe symbiosis of man and machine into new forms of being,\u201d but it\u2019s probably best enjoyed as a novel bit of escapist fun, an extravagant environment in the tradition of Montmartre\u2019s famously demonic interior to the Cabaret de L\u2019Enfer\u2019s hellish cabaret show.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s a fitting legacy to Giger\u2019s mark on the arts world. Never one to shy away with his creative stamp, enjoying a presence in the world of entertainment, his litany of video game commissions<\/a> attests to, but a chance to grapple with his work up close and personal need not be diminished by having a beer or toastie in hand, or knocking back their specially branded absinthe for a little extra netherworld kick.<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Museum HR Giger \/ Kedar Misani) Fri 24 April 2026 8:00, UK You can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30792,41,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-54827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-hr-giger","9":"tag-swiss","10":"tag-switzerland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116458578574859941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}