Inside The Giger Bar – Photo courtesy of Amy Dianna
While you may have never heard of the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, you’ve definitely seen some of his work if you’ve ever seen the Alien movies. The original writer of the Alien movie, Dan O’Brennan had the idea for the movie for a while but lacked inspiration for the alien protagonist. When he saw Giger’s work he described it as being horrible, but at the same time beautiful. At that point he decided to make the movie about a Giger monster.
Giger has gone on to create a number of art pieces as well as deigning four bars, two of which you can still visit today. The first bar is located in Chur, Switzerland while the second is in Chateau St. Germain, Gruyeres, Switzerland. The Gruyeres location is designed to look like the skeletal interior of an animal. Vertebrate pieces crisscross over the vaulted ceilings giving you the sensation of being inside a large beast, similar to stories of Jonah in the whale.
Highback chairs that line the bar look like they’re mad of human skeletons, a design that was originally meant for the Harkonnen throne in the abandoned Dune film. While their design may be slightly disturbing, they’re pretty comfortable for a bar chair!
While any sci-fi fan is guaranteed to enjoy the design of this bar, real Giger fans can head across the street to the Giger Museum where a lot of his art work is on display. This museum has collections from Giger’s different creative periods, including most of his film designs from Alien, Alien 3, Dune, Species, Poltergeist 2 and The Mystery of San Gottardo.
