Chicote Cocktail Bar by Luis Gutierrez Soto #Luis Gutierrez Soto

Luis Gutiérrez Soto, a member of the Generation of `27, was one of the most prolific architects in the Spanish architecture of the last century and also one of the most eclectic ones. During his career he designed such well-known but different buildings as the Barceló Cinema, the Headquarters of the Spanish Air Force or the office building for “La Unión y el Fénix” Insurance Company in La Castellana Mall.

Despite his eclecticism, there was a continuous concern about interior design in his work that made him design as well the furniture for some of his buildings. A sample that luckily still stands is the cocktail bar that he designed for the famous barman Pedro Chicote in the Gran Via of Madrid in 1931.

Chicote Cocktail Bar is part of a series of leisure buildings, like the Casablanca Dancing Room in Madrid or Las Arenas Swimming Pool in Valencia, where Rationalism was combined to the influence of Erich Mendelsohn’s Expressionism and the Art Déco Style that he discovered in the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Pris in 1925. Behind a radically elementary façade, made of two large windows on each side of the central revolving door and a simple sign with just the name of the bar in a clear sans serif font type, the interior is a comprehensive artwork where the typical curvilinear surfaces, the lighting, the mirrors and the furniture generate the interior space.

Among the furniture, we can find clearly art deco pieces, with leather upholstery, golden tops and fine wood`s veins, beside pieces with a clear Rationalist influence, like the Chicote Armchair, with a nickel steel structure, manufactured by Rolaco, the same firm that produced in Spain the tubular steel chairs designed by Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe.