Archive · Press release

Stockholm: Street Art

Press release, 22 April 2008. "World's first permanent bar made of ice now twice as big" — graffiti artists transform the new Absolut Icebar Stockholm.

What it announced

On 21 April 2008 the world's first permanent bar made of ice reopened at the Nordic Sea Hotel on Vasaplan 4 in central Stockholm after a major rebuild. The bar had previously held thirty people; the conversion doubled that.

The new interior was the work of the graffiti artists Daniel "Ikaroz" Diaz and Pierre "Slak" Johansson, with ice artists Mark Armstrong and Mikael Nilsson also credited. Both graffiti artists had been active on the street-art scene since the mid-1980s, with exhibitions, talks and design commissions behind them. The brief was narrow and hard: create a unique urban interior inspired by street art, using ice as the only material.

In their words

"Designing ABSOLUT ICEBAR STOCKHOLM was a very interesting project, and quite a challenge," Daniel Diaz said. "It was great to be able to work with an organic material such as ice, and then transform it into an urban form of expression. We're really happy with the result."

The bar's press spokesperson put the case for the rebuild in commercial terms — interest had been high enough that the room had to be extended — before landing on the line the release is remembered for: "We must be the only bar in the world that is made of a several-metre-long ghetto blaster of ice."

Context

Street Art was the first of the named design themes and set the pattern for everything that followed: a complete demolition and rebuild, an outside designer with no ice background, and a press release built around the collision between the material and the idea. The other themes.