Bright sparks at the RCA artbar

Keen or what? Robin Clark, second year architecture and interior design student at the Royal College of Art, has slept on a bar floor for the past week, snuggled in his sleeping bag amid a melange of light fittings, wires and Absolut vodka bottles.

“Actually, he slept on the logo, which came wrapped in a huge bit of hardboard,” explains fellow designer Sarah Harkins, who preferred to go home “even if it was just for an hour’s sleep”.

Harkins and Clark have redesigned the RCA ArtBar for the first time since interiors man Ben Kelly designed it while a student in 1973 with fellow student Geoff Hollington.

Harkins and Clark were given 5000 by the college, but knew that the sum wouldn’t go very far.

So the dynamic Harkins got off her bum and on to Absolut Vodka, which coughed up 10 000.

The bar opened last week, resplendent in blue, silver, citron yellow and purple, with a metallic garage door over the bar. “The place was getting dingy, and we wanted to express the current mood at the RCA, which is fairly optimistic,” says Harkins.

The logo coexists as artbar and ArtBar throughout the interior. “There’s no continuity at all,” says an RCA spokesman blithely.

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