Hram
Location: Shota Rustaveli, 11, Kyiv (Ukraine)
Area: 393 m²
Completed: 2023
Photographer: Andriy Bezuglov
Hram is a music bar located on the ground floor of Kyiv downtown, next to the central synagogue, the Palace of Sports, and the Ukrainian Heroes Square.
A conceptual bar is a temple of hedonism, where a person is of the highest value, regardless of their religious affiliation, age, gender, or musical preferences.
Hram is unique because it has five bars operating simultaneously in a compact 400 square-meter space. That separates the flow of people and helps to avoid crowding of guests. Visitors can freely move around the venue, socialize, try new things, and choose cocktails according to their mood and taste. It allows you to do bar crawling without leaving the space.
The Smoke Bar is located closest to the entrance, on the same level as the hostess desk and wardrobe area. It serves strong smoke cocktails. Next to the bar is a smoking area with tables. A powerful ventilation system ensures guests in other areas do not smell smoke. If you take a drink, walk two steps away from the Smoke Bar, and stop at the leather mini counter that runs along the glass parapet, you will have a view of the lower part of the establishment - the main hall with two bars. That is the place to gauge the vibe, look at the guests of the evening, and decide which bar you will try next.
Two staircase lead to the party's epicenter on the venue's lower level. One of them goes directly to the main hall, and the other leads a little to the right to the area next to the restrooms. At the end of the stairs, guests are greeted by a unique video art explicitly created for the project.
The visual magnet of the space is the Stained-Glass Bar, where thematic cocktails dedicated to sins and redemption are prepared. Behind the mixologist is a large stained glass window depicting the embodiment of human sins. The stained-glass window is made in a traditional craft technique, and the light passing through it acquires a thick amber hue. The Stained Glass Bar is elevated on a podium, which allows for functional zoning of the space without partitions or walls.
Centrum Bar has a rectangular island design. Its wooden façade is decorated with carvings with a stylized Gothic pattern. This bar is a unique autonomous structure that can be disconnected from communications and moved closer to the wall during concerts and events. Such a solution has no analogs in Ukraine. It results from the best bar technology specialists' creativity and careful engineering work. You can also fold rounded copper tables along the wall, their tabletops' position fixed by magnets. If necessary, the table can be folded down to free up space.
Like the stained-glass bar, the DJ console is placed on a podium made of old barn boards. It was important for the designers not to age the wood but to use honest material that has already served for decades. The DJ stand also has a recognizable carved facade. The structure in the form of a musical instrument organ decorates the glass wall behind the DJ's place.
Another hidden bar is located behind the organ. It is like a church altar, where only the chosen ones and church ministers enter. The Hyde Bar is an isolated room that can be rented for a separate event or private meeting. The decoration of this space complements the overall Hram concept with exclusive details. Rounded green marble tables, leather chairs, and smoked herringbone parquet are there. The room has its own bar, DJ stand, and separate restrooms. A unique 3D-printed bottle shelf behind the mixologist continues the church theme. The Hide-bar's acoustics and soundproofing were designed so that sounds from the general space behind the tinted "police glass" do not reach here.
The fifth, the service bar, is located in a separate room that only employees can access. It works to relieve the contact bars on crowded evenings when there are a lot of guests, and all the tables are occupied.
The color palette of Hram is a charcoal shade of black, light wood of the facades and old wood of the podiums, red leather, unpolished copper, and an amber palette provided by stained glass. The walls of the room are covered with textured black acoustic coating. Eclectic decor elements: a mirror ball with a frame in the form of a polar star, an all-seeing eye, barbed wire resembling a crown of thorns, and cross-shaped lamps in niches, appeal to religious symbolism without direct quotations.
The founding team of the bar is a Dream Team of six people, each of whom is an exceptional specialist in their field. Among them are a legendary Kyiv mixologist, a successful restaurant owner, a bar technologist, a graphic designer, and two interior designers. Each co-founder has experience in launching and managing their own F&B project.
"For us, Hram is more than just another high-quality interior, it is a passion project. Creating this space, we were brave and embodied all the experience we have gained over almost 20 years of commercial design. The idea for the place was born in 2021. Since then, the concept has changed several times from the most daring and shocking to the most moderate, to stop somewhere in the middle of these two extremes finally," says Dmytro Bonesko, art director of YOD Group.
Bar mobility system
