The New Chic in London’s Gritty East End by Marie Cleland
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If Shoreditch, in the East End of London, has a vernacular, it’s a grungy lounge bar with beaten Chesterfields, exposed brick walls and salvaged timber detailing. It’s a look that has dominated the neighbourhood since gentrification began over a decade ago.
And from the point of view of some of the locals, it’s a character under threat from the excessively chic, dare we say pretentious, establishments starting to migrate there from the West End (such as the Rococo-inspired Beach Blanket Babylon) as Shoreditch's edgy urbanity evolves into trendy sophistication.
Distinctly Shiny
Enter The Hoxton Pony, the work of East End boy and renowned mixologist Gerry Calabrese and architect Yanik Allard, a fan of contemporary minimalism. The Pony, as Calabrese would have us call it (like it’s the friendly local pub), has a distinctly shiny facade that stands out against the grit and grime around it. It serves East End grub (including the ubiquitous pie and mash and jellied eels), but offers West End service, wrapped up in stylised surroundings.
To the street it projects a frivolous side, literally. On a huge slab of 12mm-thick tempered glass is the illuminated image of Fragonard’s 18th-century emblem of cheeky flirtation, The Swing. Behind this, on the ground floor of the two-level space, is the main bar wrapped in rippling panels of brushed chrome. At each end, sunken into the wall, are seaside-themed dioramas that evoke old-world charm and bring the beach to a particularly nature-starved part of the city.
Doing Something with Rubbish
At one end of the room is a feature that especially resonates with the design’s themes of 60s conceptual art and the post-modern concept of visual illusion. The glossy white metal twisted into an abstract form could be just a textural detail, but on closer inspection it’s actually a mass of crushed car bodies. “The idea was to do something with what we consider rubbish,” says Allard.
When health and safety laws stopped him from buying cars from a scrap yard, he went straight to a vehicle recovery centre. “That held us up for weeks, waiting for the right kind of accident to happen,” says Calabrese. A tad macabre?
“There’s emotion there, which is what I wanted—there’s an emotional charge to it,” says Allard. “Put it in that white gloss and you take away the goriness of it and it makes something beautiful, hopefully, out of something that was destined to be pulverised.”
Reflections
Reflection is another feature of the design: smoked mirrors provide a glossy surface in the restaurant area and floor-to-ceiling mirrors envelop the dance floor downstairs, creating the illusion of space. Considering Shoreditch is one of the hotbeds of up-and-coming British music (legendary clubs Cargo and 333 are nearby), it's fitting that Allard credits a dance track as one of the inspirations behind the design. Mind Games by Abyss is like sounds bouncing off a surface, "much the same as the reflections of party-goers bouncing off surfaces within the bar space", says Allard.
Being able to tell a savvy, cynical clientele that has seen it all before that the design was inspired not by other projects but by a dance track is just one of the ways in which The Hoxton Pony is a highly conceptual, and clever, project.
Interested in seeing this new project? Check out Travel Intelligence's listings of chic luxury hotels in London.