Carefully hewn from what look like Mobius strips of sinuous mahogany, Bar Raval is a 21st-century reinterpretation of Spanish Art Nouveau that introduces Toronto to the pintxo bar, a cornerstone of social and gastronomic culture in Basque Country. The client charged us with executing an ambitious task: “create an art piece” that would become an enduring culinary and civic institution. We interpreted the directive through two aesthetic lenses: Spanish design and the organicism of muscle tissue. Raval’s sculptural sentience pays direct homage to tattooed musculature in the context of Art Nouveau tropes and craftsmanship reimagined for contemporary Toronto. - Partisans