Bar Europe is an exhibition that doubles as a lounge. To mark its presidency of the European Union in 2004, the Dutch government commissioned Droog Design to transform the lobby of the union’s dull council building in Brussels for half a year.
Droog Design invited each of the 25 member states to select a chair and invited Bas van Tol to design the 100-m2 interior. In response to the challenge of creating a new interior within an existing one, Bas van Tol came up with an oasis made up of three basic elements: carpet tile, seat and lampshade.
The motley chairs read as guests, standing out against an orderly configuration of green sofa elements, as regular as a polder landscape. Framing the sea of seats are carpet tiles in a patchwork of fresh green tones below, an echo of the classic Dutch tiled floor, and an array of oversized ‘lampshades’ above.
The shades are wrapped in cotton prints of Dutch landscapes, iconic images from the Golden Age. The same era inspired the tulip vases filled with flowers hand-painted by artist Franck Bragigand that adorn the frames not enveloped by paintings.
Hidden inside these volumes are extractor fans, as the project predates the smoking ban. Large ashtrays attached to some tables offer more evidence of a smoker’s paradise, and even the golden tint on the inner surface of the overhead volumes conceals nicotine stains.
Bas van Tol also arranged ‘hangouts’ along the adjoining corridor around the executive chamber to allow for more private conversations on custom-made chairs of Formica beneath similar cotton shades printed with the figures from Vermeer’s interiors.