Boutique Design - March 2019 - 34

CREATIVE FORCE
TWO BIT CIRCUS, ARTS DISTRICT

boutiquedesign.com MARCH 2019

board with it. To balance it out, we brought in a third aesthetic
pillar based on an industrial look and feel," he says. Cue natural
wood (or a simulated finish if necessary), neutral or warm incandescent lighting with colored spotlights to distinguish different
areas and a major centerpiece bar. That last one was a test of willpower and invention-placing it as desired in the middle of the
space required extensive trenching to run plumbing and beer lines
from the kitchen at 2BC's east end. Putting a robotic bartender,
Gearmo del Pouro, behind the counter at his own bar to the west
of the carousel one also took some extra forethought. Like most
bots at this point, he's a little clumsy, so built-in affordances keep
him from accidentally beaning his customers.
Alvarez himself had to be a lot more precise in his space planning beyond that beverage hotspot. Unlike a lot of gaming locations, the experiences at 2BC aren't in an isolated, quiet room.
They're located in the middle of what is effectively a nightlife spot
with all the noise and (com)motion that implies. "Throughout the
venue design process we made constant tradeoffs between entertainment density, electrical requirements, and sound intrusion,"
says Alvarez. "For those games that we developed in-house, we
could make subtle design modifications to better suit the venue.
For the rest, we've been fortunate to have good relationships with
vendors; sometimes a minor tweak to a game experience can
have major impact on the overall feel of the space." And, some
can be in a more open space as long as the infrared motion
sensors from one game don't cause havoc with another, players
have good headphones as part of their headsets and there is
adequate line-of-sight blocking.
If there were a behind-the-scenes for these restaurants, the
talking heads would agree that eating in Los Angeles is about taking
a big bite out of the life that diner is living at the moment. Yum! £

HECTOR ALVAREZ
TWO BIT CIRCUS

PROJECT
PARTICIPANTS
TWO BIT CIRCUS
CLIENT
TWO BIT CIRCUS
DESIGN FIRM
TWO BIT CIRCUS: Hector
Alvarez, creative director

4 Greatest Show on Earth:
Theatrical is the name
of the game when a
carousel-inspired bar
is a venue centerpiece.
Grab a seat on the
hindquarters of a
carousel horse for a
subversive perch.

C O U R T E S Y O F T W O B I T C I R C U S ( T W O B I T C I R C U S , A LVA R E Z )

Sci-fi just got real: 48 VR experiences are on the menu at this former
apparel warehouse, along with arcade games and updated midwaystyle eats. It doesn't just bill itself as the world's first micro amusement park. It proves it, subdividing a massive space into a
22nd-century spin on the circus for those who like mashups, handson activities and tech just as fun. After all, LA is home to the brains
behind some of the film world's most memorable geek moments
(think about the green screen work on your favorite movie).
How did the team create this haven of both nerdiness and
cool? They'd actually developed and honed the brand through
pop-ups long before it had a permanent space, but when they
found this building in 2016, they expanded the brand language to
include environmental design. Then, they added in layers of interior-specific detail. When they sat down to envision the venue,
everything from "dazzle camo" (the geometric pattern that is
their version of circus stripes) to their signature palette was
already set. Those colors are: Not Black, Clown's Blood, Mohawk
Red, Tealio Iglesias, Ally McTeal, Cheese Product and Not White,
as listed in their brand guidelines, along with the RGB, Hex,
CMYK and Pantone values for those shades.
"We understand that Clown's Blood is extremely hazardous to
source, so for non-paintable items and surfaces, we try to look for
opportunities to do four-color substrate or decal printing that
matches our color values," says Hector Alvarez, creative director, Two
Bit Circus, tongue firmly in cheek. If nothing is an exact match,
they'll just do their best-Alvarez notes there is usually something
pretty close. If a perfectionistic match for a certain shade of yellow
seems a little cheesy to designers, well, it did to Alvarez as well.
"We knew right from the start that both circus and videogame
culture would heavily influence our theming, but we were also
very deliberate on making sure we didn't go too literal or over-

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Boutique Design - March 2019

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