VORTEX SOUTH, MARINE LINES, MUMBAI

Vortex South, a Throbbing Lounge Bar located in South Mumbai is the newest Hot Destination for Mumbai’s over-dosed party animals.

Clients wanted, more than anything else, to make a nightclub, but yet, to not go all out as being seen as a nightclub, rather than make the right blend of a Bar, a Diner and a Nighclub, to be able to cater to the day crowd as well as the night crawlers. A feat very rarely achieved by very few.

The project was full of challenges from the 1st hour. Previously a rundown restaurant, housed in a very old construction, with walls and ceilings totally out of proportion. Tons of civil work to break and re-build, it was a tough prospect to make the place soundproof and treat the walls acoustically, but also to get straight lines and angles. Add to that, the extremely hard task of keeping one’s vision clear as one goes thru a project to ensure the place remains what was intended (a Diner Bar) and doesn’t turn into something entirely different (a nightclub). And to top it all, the lack of a single point execution team and a total lack of co-ordination amongst the dozens of vendors and stakeholders made the entire task an ordeal of herculean proportions. We consider it a commendable achievement, as designers, to be able to retain and hold on to the original design vision, as well as our sanity, in the face of the bewildering and often exasperating bombardment of conflicting ideas and changes on a daily basis.

After a thorough study of the location, surrounding localities, competition and people’s perception of the area, we suggested and implemented a hybrid concept using an effective blend of colors, lights, textures and forms that refuse to get categorised by any one kind of crowd, niche or self-imposed limitation with regards to its target audience. Post planning an extensive, month-long task of breaking the old and building the new, we used night loving colors like Reds, Oranges but fused them with Greys and Whites to retain the daytime charm of the place. Playing with natural daylight and crafted lights, reflections, chemical formulas of spirits, Synaptic meshes and patterns, bright cheerful highlights on grey subtle backgrounds, unconventionally stylish yet conventionally comfortable furniture… Although the place was forced to be a Vegetarian only joint, the Ambiance and the Vibe is definitely not… The point was to create a Space that makes you forget frivolous facts like that.

The VIP Gallery: to use the old-fashioned high ceilings of the place, we designed a gallery that became a premium upper lounge for the VVIPs

The Synaptic lights: patterns of LEDs that connect all areas of the place with a symmetry that resembles the connection that all elements of our universe share on a sub-atomic level.

The formulas of Happyness: The bar-back boasts of actual chemical formulas of various alcohol compositions like whiskey, rum, vodka etc, the walls accentuated with patterns and graphics of chemical and biological representations of getting high.

The Connection: Each section of the bar is connected to each other in implicit ways thru continuation of design and feel. Although easily segregated, for different events and different audience, the entire place comes across as a Vortex of different elements defined by the theme of synaptic connections.

The versatile lights: Simply by using a dimmer, the lights were designed and conceptualised in a way that they would turn the place into a daytime bar and diner as easily as it would metamorphise into a Lounge at the turn of a dimmer knob post dusk.