SOLARC BREWING

Los Angeles, 2024

Project Team: Isaac Resnikoff, Hannah Go

When Archie approached us about designing the tasting room for his remarkable brewery, Solarc, we immediately said yes, and immediately saw a core problem to be solved.

Solarc is most well known for its gruits, a medieval style beer made without hops. These are witchy, herbal brews, with a big helping of high desert mysticism mixed in. This is, in other words, some primo hippie shit.

At the same time, Archie had made a brand new, modern brewery. Giant stainless steel vats dominated the space.

So how to reconcile these disparate elements? How to bridge the gap between mystical and modern, nature and machine, sacred and profane?

Tinfoil, obviously.

Rolls and rolls of tinfoil, covering every surface in a kind of futuristic bark. Expressive and reflective and obsessive and contemplative. (All the adjectives, actually).

We contrasted this with hand-hewn, rustic furniture and cast-iron wagon wheel chandeliers, along with a hand-cut, collaged window tinting.

In the morning, sun streams in through, painting the place in a mosaic of light.

In the evening our custom candle sconces (which we’ve called “A World Lit Only By Fire”) illuminate the hallway, and colored light washes the walls. The place becomes a mad cave.

It’s a pretty ecstatic place.