Temple of the Tounge - Bompas & Parr Studio, London, June 2017
Bompas & Parr welcomed its most loyal followers to the studio to mark the company's first ten years.
Called Temple of the Tongue, and designed as a satellite of the retrospective exhibition, Tongue Town, which launched in May 2017 at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, visitors to the studio roved around its space on a headphone tour as the studio went about its daily business.
Billed as part of The London Festival of Architecture, visitors interacted with a selection of gastronomical, immersive and flavour-based innovations, and became silent wandering 'ghosts' as they entered the kitchens, workshops and meeting rooms to witness the experimentation and development work of a busy experiential design studio.
The Festival of Architecture was the perfect platform for Temple of the Tongue as one of Bompas & Parr’s first ever projects, the Architectural Jelly Banquet, was also launched as part of the festival in 2008.
In addition, some 400 of Bompas & Parr's wildest fans gathered for a summer party in the yard outside the studio - a party that included a host of features that represented a group of ideas too feral for commercial activation.
Features included a volcano hot tub, classical statuary vodka luges, DIY cocktailing from an optic chandelier, glitter plunge pool, world's worst cake competition, liqueur-filled Super Soaker, crossbow target practice, supernatural life drawing, builders rubble slide (into a skip) and the Monument to The Unknown Drinker - an ever-vomiting living statue (a tongue-in-cheek tribute to London's contribution to drinking culture).
Photography by Bompas & Parr.