{"id":76217,"date":"2025-05-05T10:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T10:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/76217\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T10:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T10:29:08","slug":"inside-the-london-cocktail-bar-inspired-by-the-bauhaus-art-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/76217\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the London Cocktail Bar Inspired by The Bauhaus Art Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not technically called A Bar with Shapes for a Name<\/a>, but that\u2019s how you\u2019ll have to refer to it. It\u2019s true name is \ud83d\udd36\ud83d\udfe5\ud83d\udd35\u2014impossible to say, but intriguing and enigmatic. Its peculiarly styled name is just the one of the ways in which Shapes, as it\u2019s often nicknamed, exists outside of the traditional cocktail bar box. Opened in 2021 in East London, Shapes is built entirely around Bauhaus principles, and serves drinks that are as surprising as they are elegant.<\/p>\n

After working together for years at the much lauded Artesian Bar in London<\/a>, Paul Lougrat and Remy Savage set off on their own. Their concept: create a bar that\u2019s based, top-to-bottom, on the principles laid out by the Bauhaus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In line with the tenets of the revolutionary art school founded in 1919 in Germany, the team at Shapes created a bar where form follows function, with drinks based around functional minimalism, radical simplicity, and the unification of technology, art, and craft. Savage was fiercely committed to upholding Bauhaus tenets as he began to build out Shapes. \u201cWe pride ourselves on being completely coherent with a particular artistic ambition,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Photo by Leonardo Filippini<\/p>\n

The idea, he explains, is to answer a question essential to tthe Bauhaus movement: \u201cHow can we manifest beauty at scale?\u201d The answer is to create a bar in which every element is as functional as possible. That means flavor elements like fruits and herbs are made into distillates for more consistent application in cocktails, and that each drink is pre-batched and individually bottled for speed of service and perfect consistency. Each cocktail is rigorously evaluated on flavor elements, texture, aroma, and appearance to most perfectly express the vision of the bartender who made it. The team makes its own ice so that each sphere is perfectly round, each cube sharply squared off. \u201cEverything that takes a long time has already been made,\u201d Savage says, \u201cand all of this is done in the back of house in order to be able to effectively serve drinks that still are creative and very current modern drinks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bauhaus is just the beginning. Savage plans to open bars built around different modern art movements all around the world. In June of 2023, he opened up Bar Nouveau in Paris, and has ideas for an Art Deco bar in the US. \u201cYou can Google ten different art movements from the 20th century,\u201d he says, \u201cI will open bars based on all of them.\u201d The beauty of Shapes, though, is that you don\u2019t need to know anything about art history, Bauhaus design aesthetics, or the delicate science of distillation to have a good time and a great cocktail. Here are three drinks at Shapes that help tell its story.<\/p>\n

Instagram content<\/p>\n

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates<\/a> from.<\/p>\n

Three Cocktails Behind Shapes’ Cocktail Program<\/p>\n

Kazimir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Inspired by the painting White on White by Kazimir Malevich, this cocktail arrives as a clear liquid with a single large ice cube. Just as Malevich\u2019s deceptively simple painting portrays an off-white square askew on a white canvas, Savage\u2019s drink holds much more than it seems. The crystal-clear liquid is peach yogurt that\u2019s been clarified<\/a> in a centrifuge with vodka and finished with a few dashes of absinthe. \u201cThe idea is to carry tension between the two strong aromatics: the stone fruit and the absinthe,\u201d Savage says. The large cube, made in Shapes\u2019 own facility\u2014Bauhaus Warehaus<\/a>, just down the road\u2014holds a square glass prism inside like some kind of tesseract, another reference to the frame-within-a-frame motif of Malevich\u2019s painting. Each sip is lightly sweet and satiny soft, thanks to the lactic acid left over from the clarifying process.<\/p>\n