The Punch Bowl (1959 film)

Transcription

>> So if you could just tell me what the Architectural Punch Bowl is. >> Right, well for the Architectural Punch Bowl Bompas & Parr are flooding buildings with booze and creating, turning them into a punch bowl that's so big you can actually boat across it before dipping your glass in and having a drink. [ Background Music ] >> There are a number of quite tricky issues that you've got to manage. One is buildings aren't meant to be flooded with alcohol. And for this, we have actually engaged in a six month, knowledge transfer partnership with Bartlett School of Architecture, working out how can you do it? So we worked-- worked with Nick Westby there. >> I was brought onto the project as the architect to deal with essentially making a structure which we could assemble in the venue in just two days which is the get in period. The build is going on here at the Bartlett's courtyard where we're using the facilities and we're creating quite a large, large construction. Well, here you see some of the modules that are gonna make up the substructure of the-- of the punch bowl and we've essentially got roughly 25 pieces, that all fit together. >> Bompas & Parr have got a really long history of working with UCL. I was at UCL, Harry was at the Bartlett studying architecture. And UCL, it's just-- there's just so much knowledge and expertise there. That it'd be ridiculous not to tap into it. Yeah, it's a really, really valuable contact for us and we're, you know, proud to be alumni. [ Background Music ] >> There's some interesting historic precedent for this where basically in 1694, a British Admiral, Edward Russell, hosted a party of 6,000 people and he filled up a punch bowl, a vast fountain, in fact, with punch and which was served out by small child rowing back and forth across it. Now, his punch serves 6,000 people, ours can serve 25,000 people. We've got over four tons of punch. The actual punch bowl itself is gonna be 48 metres squared. So it's huge. It's really, really large. [ Music ] [ Background Music ] >> I had a time at the Bartlett to, you know, just test some of the structure. And brilliantly Alex James was able to come on board. We're able to get some shots of him in one of our prototypes. [ Music ] [ Background Music ] >> What was his interest in it then? Was he-- >> How can you-- how can you not be interested? You know, we're flooding a building with alcohol like, you know. And he was-- Alex is obviously a great food person. He's eaten at the best restaurants all over the world. He's got his own cheese farm. So, you know, when he heard that we were doing this, he was-- he was very, very keen to get involved. [ Background Music ] >> The building is not in the best of health and when we first started looking at it as a site for the punch bowl and I started doing some back of the envelope calculations, we realised we're dealing with five-- possibly more tons of liquid that we're putting in plus the weight of the structure and this started to keep some of us awake at night. The next difficulty is actually containing that liquid within the room and making sure that it's not gonna leak. So the tank itself has a series of baffles around the edge to stop any waves that might come off the boat which is floating on it from splashing at the sides of the wall. And a series of membranes both containing the punch and also underneath the structure, make sure that we have a sort of fail safe method of both containing it and containing any leak that we might get. [ Music ] [ Background Music ] >> Here we're going to be making sure people go in clean and they go in safe before they enter the main event, the punch bowl itself. As they walk through butcher flaps, they'll be surrounded by billows of dry ice and overwhelmed by the smell of the punch. A lucky chosen few will be able to boat across the punch on rafts while others can use the remote controlled garnishes and pilot them around while everyone is drinking away with their courvoisuer punch. >> I'm pretty tired now but I'm pretty happy. It's really fantastic to see it all come together. >> With this, we promised a lot, we said, look, we're gonna flood a room with punch. You're going to be able to row over it and you're gonna be able to drink it. I think a lot of people that came along thought that we weren't going to deliver -- we delivered in spades and it's like, oh, my god this is such a good drink. They really liked the cocktail. >> Why do you do what you do? What drives you? >> As much as anything, it's very, very interesting. It's always, you know, a challenge to be surmounted, you know, problems to be overcome and it's great just seeing how people react to it is just-- it's just absolutely marvellous. [ Music ]