All Eyes on Me
London
A thought-provoking pop-up collaboration. The All Eyes On Me installation played on the modern-day tensions between privacy and visibility. Attended by over 800 leading designers and their clients, The Restaurant & Bar Design Awards celebrates the world’s most innovative food and beverage spaces. Conran and Partners, alongside three other design studios, were asked to design a pop-up bar for the evening’s celebratory party.
Technology projected the human race so much faster culturally in the 00s than in any other decade, changing our lives more than anyone could have predicted. Conran and Partners took this technological revolution as the starting point for their design, playing on tensions between privacy and visibility, with a nod to the growth of predatory surveillance in the decade of Big Brother.
The installation “All Eyes On Me”, invited people to see and be seen. A striking central CCTV installation used simple lighting in a dramatic way to pulse spotlights at random on guests in the bar, enhancing the feeling of being under scrutiny.
Many components of the bar were made beforehand to allow for quick assembly on site. The practice used white foamex and white painted mdf as the key materials, with a seaside style cut-out as a fun and tangible take on the virtual selfie.
