Mikkeller Bar | Femmes Régionales

Often beer drinking is something you connect with big, round tummies and sports on a flat screen. But at the Copenhagen based Mikkeller Bar the high quality of the beer goes hand in hand with the delicacy of the surroundings.

Mikkel Borg Bjergsø’s ambition was nothing less than to create the best beer bar in the world – a small, cool place for beer enthusiasts as well as novices to enjoy top quality micro brewed beer from Mikkeller and other innovative breweries from around the world. And he wanted the interior to match the quality of the beer. Therefore he hired the Danish design bureau Femmes Regionales, who decided to combine the classic interior of old Danish pubs with something more modern and elegant:
“- Just like Mikkeller has combined the old profession of brewing with more innovative and experimenting methods,” Caroline Hansen, one of the founders of Femmes Regionales, explains.

With her companion Mie Nielsen, she went pub-crawling in the centre of Copenhagen to collect some inspiration.

“We found the contrast between the classical pub interior and something more modern really interesting,” the designer says. The result is a relaxed yet sophisticated whole with wooden tables and benches, a shiny wall of black tiles and details of golden lamps, knobs, coat hooks and flowers in dusty colours.

All in all the bar is not quite as ‘manly’ as most beer places, and Femmes Regionales wanted to add a twist of solemness to the place as well, which they – among other things – did by designing a row of small chests of drawers with mirrors and golden knobs that they hung on the wall, Caroline Hansens explains:

“If there is something a bit solemn to a place, people won’t bang their fists in the tables and empty their glasses in one sip, but behave in a different manner. We like to demand something from our audience – beauty generates beauty.”

Mikkeller Bar was voted the best bar in Copenhagen by the Danish daily paper Politiken in april 2012.