Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 11

Spaces of Seduction

sure of excess requires consciousness as well as voluptuousness.
“Transgression opens the door into what lies beyond the limits usually
observed, but it maintains these limits. Transgression is complementary to the pro
fane world, exceeding its limits, but not destroying it,” as George Bataille once
said. Two issues that are rarely raised in architecture: taboo and transgression ex
ceeding limits.
Architecture can host different forms of sensuous interaction between
human beings, material and immaterial things: it can offer intimacy and openness,
hide-outs, discoveries, disguise and reveiling, insights, glimpses and vistas. Alfredo
Arriba’s “Velvet Bar” is a game, a reaction. It is an amalgam of color and light. It
is a baroque scheme, purposefully variegated, in which “functional style serves as
an excuse for shaking off certain ties and entering less trodden paths” (6). All
finishes are tactile and convey an aura of mystery: slate, teak, metals, enamels,
sweeping sensual forms underlining the concept of skin.

The Blue Velvet Discoteque by Alfredo Arribas.