Pattern 90: Beer Hall

Historically, beer was a vital asset to civilization. Water was notoriously unsuitable for drinking so it had to be processed before consumption. Modern filtration wasn’t possible so natural transformations were utilized like the fermentation of wheat and hops. Beer was one of the many recurring touchstones for defining a culture. Many places laid claim to the best beer in the world and a lot of real estate and infrastructure was dedicated to its sale, production, and consumption.

The Halve Maan brewery in Bruges, Belgium recently expanded to a bottling plant a little way out of town but wished to maintain production at the original factory. To accomplish this, they spent seven years getting permission to drill a pipeline under the city to pump beer for bottling.

In the main shopping district of Munich, Germany, there is a three-story beer hall called Hofbrauhaus that’s been there since the sixteenth century. Lively music fills the halls every night and is overrun on occasions such as the famous harvest festival; Oktoberfest. It is so successful that a thematic replica was built in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Beer halls share similar characteristics to restaurants and bars yet stand apart in specific ways. Beer halls are more than a place to drink, they facilitate revelry and merriment effortlessly to create a social institution. According to Alexander, this is a pretty simple feat to achieve, having more to do with organization than clever tricks or branding.

“We think that there are two critical qualities for the setting:

1. The place holds a crowd that is continuously mixing between functions – the bar, the dance floor, a fire, darts, the bathrooms, the entrance, the seats; and these activities are concentrated and located round the edge so that they generate continual criss-crossing.

2. The seats should be largely in the form of tables for four to eight set in open alcoves – that is, tables that are defined for small groups, with walls, columns, and curtains – but open at both ends.”

These alcoves make a space welcoming for most sizes of groups while supporting the “fluidity of the scene”. Such interaction between people of a community also encourages spontaneous encounters, adding to the sense of place of the town.