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The Giger-Bar in Tokyo was actually created against my will. While
I was in Tokyo, I was asked to make a wish, on stage, during a press
conference. Spontaneously, I wished for a bar, which was then brought into being even
more spontaneously!
For this bar, I had developed the concept of tables-for-two in open elevator
cars in the manner of gliding elevators that would travel up and down the four-story establishment, perpetually in motion. I hadn't taken into consideration
the Japanese fire marshals. I had already been driven to the brink of madness
by the building codes requiring flexible structures to ensure that buildings
withstand earthquake shocks. When they nixed the elevator idea and prescribed
fixed cabins hanging like balconies with wire mesh on the atrium side, I threw
in the towel. Only Conny de Fries and my former agent persevered. This bar,
with its huge entrance area, inside which spiral stairs open to the atrium,
came into being.
It seems the bar was tailor-made for the underworld, which is not what I had intended. A friend who visited the place about 5 years after it opened
told me it had fallen into the hands of the Yakuza. He went on to report that
he was alone in the bar until 11 o'clock, when it began to fill with the type
of unsavory characters who might have installed a roulette table in the atrium. My friend chose to take his leave.
The bar no longer exists. Insiders know that a bar in Tokyo rarely survives
more than five years!
H.R. Giger
Excerpt
from the book
www HR Giger com
© 1997 Taschen Verlag
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