A10 online - É Pra Poncha Bar, Porto


An always changing bar

É Pra Poncha is one of the newest bars in Oporto's famous central area of Galeria Paris, a trendy nightlife hotspot in this northern portuguese city. Occupying a long and narrow ground floor of an old building, its inner space is an imaginative recreation of a multi-colored cavern, an eye-catching result of the fresh design by young portuguese architect Antonio Fernandez.

The space, ceiling and part of its side walls, were outfitted with consecutive layers of lacquered MDF emulating stalactites formations. This design strategy allowed Fernandez to freely manipulate and shape the different programmatic spaces of the bar, creating voids and several functional chambers, like “the clean pantry, the dirty pantry, toilets and storage room”, enumerates the architect.

But besides its formal appearance, one of the most important aspects of a bar must be its overall ambience and inviting atmosphere. In order to create different auras over the course of an evening, a series of LED lights were strategically installed in between the MDF panels. Those lights can slowly shift from bloody red to icy blue, grabbing the attention of as many visitors as possible.

Although the curious name of the bar – an homage to the drink Poncha from the Madeira island, a sweet mix of a sugar-cane brandy, honey and lemon juice – is not connected with its formal materialization, either in aspects of form/shape or light/color, the idea of creating a differential and atypical bar appearance was significant since the beginning. The number of bars in this area grew rapidly over the last couple of years, so the challenge of creating something different is still on the rise, even if the available budgets are considerably diminishing.