A Speakeasy in Amsterdam

"I met Van Gogh upstairs. I mean it. He was there, I swear. You could see him through the window... Oh, he has two ears still. No, thank you, I'm not drunk."

You should be aware that in such an environment, the lights are dim, especially in such a soft retro place, more than half of the people have big smiles on their faces. Half of the people are strangers to each other, and it is not so easy to communicate. But the atmosphere always encourages you, as if you were destined to become a dull drunk if you donnot say something.

"Why build an American 1920 style speakeasy here? Well, what it looks like? What the hell is going on in the papers? There is no evidence for alcohol prohibition, I think-- will it start 6 months later? "

Netherland is a great country with a long history, including an outstanding history of winemaking and alcohol sales. A great deal of Dutch gin made its way to the world's wine tables by sea and is known as "Dutch courage". Of course, gin was once ubiquitous in drugstore counters across America.

"Can you understand? America, 1920?"

"Interesting imagination. I'm getting curious about the publishing business. I have a friend who used to paint on porcelain when he was young... Huh? Does the pattern on porcelain have little to do with printing? Oh, and one of his sons became a film director. Is that also a kind of media industry?"

"Where did you get that news?"

To create something new in a historic building, it is necessary to consider whether it is understood by the people in its context.

"From 2020, who knows!"

"You know that I came to Amsterdam to study literature, well, and Latin, to prepare for the exam. I lived in Wittenburg, my uncle's dormitory room, from which window I could see the whole landscape of the marine shipyard. But I was at the museum every day -- luckily it was free. Rembrandt's masterpieces captured me more than Latin did...

Speaking of that shipyard, it's residential now, and there seems to have a royal lifeboat depot still. The surrounding residents are as warm-hearted as ever, telling you everything you can find: the distribution of industries, the traffic, the attractions, the types of people... Of course, you still have to live there and walk around, no one can feel art and lives through statistics.

"I bet this dude is drunk, but I don't think you're much sober. Or perhaps he cannot listen well."

"The Dutch are not always puritanical about wine, especially art. They mixed art and life very early -- but no Latin."

"That's true. Drinking has entered the culture in a humorous way. This is not started by artists of Amsterdam Impressionism. From the genre paintings of Jan Sten in the Golden Age to Amsterdam Impressionism, Dutch painters have a tradition of bringing elegant and vulgar things to life and making them artistic."

There is no clear line between art and life, no clear line between elegance and indulgence. But on the other hand, this is not to say that art and life are confused, that elegance and indulgence are confused. There is an obscure line. Like a painting, it always has an artistic aspect, but it can also interpret the mundane; It will always have an emotional side, but it is also serious. A thing lies between clarity and unclarity, between mastery and not mastery. It cannot be presented as an "image", but only as an "impression".

"just like water?"

"Yes and no. The flow of water is not the key to understanding it, but the flow of water is the most realistic reflection of the light, or the flow of water magnifies the light. I hear that the great French painters -- not the neoclassical ones, of course -- often paint on boats. Models are wives, prostitutes or no models at all. This is the unique charm of water, and the impressionists were able to capture it. Oh, no, no, no, in the golden age, there were geniuses to catch it."

"I did that, too, drawing boats and water, but it was many years later. It is ridiculous that people have completely confused the sky with the water, and the air with the water, either.

'It certainly wasn't from Amsterdam -- but it might have been some French painter. They lived in The Hague when they were young, because Jonekind of Holland was a famous painter, and everyone wanted to be influenced by him...

It must be said this"impression" bears a vague resemblance to the "impression" of "impressionism".

"-- Including Monet, a Frenchman, came to the countryside around Holland. There were a lot of students or poor young artists, some of them I remember now. They influenced Barbizon and were influenced by Barbizon at almost the same time. But I don't think the countryside is any better than the city. Why don't many people paint the city?"

We tried to find the embodiment of this "impression" in the city. But rather, the "impression" of art is only an incarnation of the city.

In the floating waves on the water, in the uncertain people, in the shuttling boat, in the sunlight, in the different atmosphere of the streets...... It is full of uncertainty, vagueness and reality... Is Amsterdam even a city or a dam?

The source of all this lies in its unique hydrological environment. The invisible and changeable water determines the humanity and appearance of the city and inspires the people here every moment.

"Perhaps there are some students we don't know, painting cities, or we'll do that in the flesh."

The dam creates another kind of boundary, one that has no discernible form. But in the real world can be a relatively independent existence. This is an invisible boundary that transforms the pattern of two objects with one boundary into the pattern of two impressions with one river, a more blurred boundary.

"I don't see the necessaries to reject a metaphor for a city. It for the city is like Willem de Zwart's landscape, Van Gogh's flowers and the proverbial still life of the Golden Age. It's natural here. Just personal opinion, of course."

Therefore, it was an interesting direction to try to give the building the impression of water. Dutch life includes a conglomeration of impressions, and the 1920 speakeasy required a thrilling disguise.

The canal billows and foams: its bright exterior is still historical, while the dark underwater merges into witty, semi-private bars. The glass andmirror stainless steel bubble of impressionist art floats between established environmental boundaries and active social Spaces, suspended by slender steel structures. There are projection lights in the bubble to show the origins, history and scenes of Impressionism and this place. Immersion makes time to regrow into another kind.

The bubble both explodes suggestingly externally and dissolves slightly internally, symbolizing the unique confluence of Dutch art, environment and life, and at the same time putting impressionism in Amsterdam's water -- as it was meant to be.

The orange-red sunset outside the window stained the river into a blue glass and shattered it with the wind. This place looks out the window. Out of the window was the canal, and across the canal was a red brick building, inside which sat a young man who had been in a daze for a long time. I had just seen him. I decided to buy him a drink if he ever walked in.

'Well... another cocktail, levitating conception, you know it...thanks."