Cured by Brine

A Bengaluru cocktail bar designed by Open To Sky Architects lets the slow alchemy of salt, water and time season not just the menu, but its architecture too

16 Sep 2026

Pratishtha Rana

Can salt and water inspire a cocktail bar? The two essentials of life. The two bastions of cooking stations. The simplest recipe in the kitchen. For centuries, this mixture has preserved, seasoned and transformed ingredients, slowing time while coaxing out newer flavours. The theory of brine spills out of the jar to swathe a 120-seater restaurant-bar in Bengaluru, where salt and water’s chemistry layers the architecture itself, led by Animesh Nayak, principal architect
and founder of Open To Sky Architects.

Thereafter, it all came down to the simplicity and rusticity of materials to sketch out a community- forward space that evolves with time, its visitors and the diverse batch of cocktails and menu plated for the table. Think copper, exposed concrete, translucent glass blocks, lime plaster and foliage. “We wanted to symbolically use materials in their absolute natural form that aged well and showed varied personalities over time like the process of brining,” explains Animesh, who worked with Brine’s founders Anirudh Nopany and Sreeram Anvesh.

Of course, it’s not a riddle to find countless swanky bars on Bengaluru’s map; but Brine planned its 5,800 sq ft cavity differently, letting go of any familiar markers of a cocktail bar. “Having all the materials interact with each other in a layered format, allowing a double heighted space to be experienced so intimately by everyone was possibly the most experimental of all things we did,” declares Animesh.

"We have used copper to define portals and as accents, it is the way this material transforms the central bar into a strong visual focus that grounds everything else in play"

Animesh Nayak

Photography by Gokull Rao Kadam

Familiar Objects

Today, Brine stands where a home once used to exist. Shelves packed with glass jars of brine, a vast strip of skylight, familiar wooden furniture — a domestic few memorabilia — caught in the playground with new-age novelties like an eight-foot long carved stone boulder at the reception, a massive copper door at the entryway and shrubby lantana installations standing guard by the seaters.

Underneath, a pause on the feet, reveals natural grey stone pavers and two shades of IPS flooring that somehow summons the past home’s memory. These elements break the sterile, industrial nature of the architecture that trusts concrete as its foundation. “IPS and lime plaster embraces the space the most, softening the industrial metal form and translucent glass wrap from all sides.

We needed this sheer canvas to allow the formation of silhouettes to provide an intentional layering of elements from the exterior and within.” The warm grey tones wear another layer of texture where natural stone pavers introduce subtle shifts in form and scale, beginning at the entrance and extending across the bar in one continuous act. Reach the central axis of the bar, look up and you’ll find the bird’s nest, a suspended installation, hung above the lounge as a tussle with the double-heighted space.

A Lantana installation by Bamboopecker is set amidst the restaurant, with lighting design consultancy by Licht Kunst Licht AG and landscaping by Crosshatch Designs; Photography by Gokull Rao Kadam

Photography by Gokull Rao Kadam

Remnants of the site’s past of a home soon reappear in the form of copper, another material long intertwined with rituals of the kitchen. “While we have used copper to define portals and as accents, it is the way this material transforms the central bar into a strong visual focus that grounds everything else in play,” adds Animesh. Brine’s vocabulary was rather small yet sensorially visceral, as the architect lays it out.

“The restaurateurs came to us with a clear brief. They needed a cocktail bar inspired by Japanese precision, European elegance and global flavours. The keywords that guided the space were natural materials, brokenness, unassuming and community among others.” A cocktail in one hand and the other reaching for the plate, every nook at Brine nudges the diner to experience the space differently — changing frames, dancing shafts of light through the skylights, and jars full of brine, all of which make the act of noticing almost tangible.

A custom copper alcove is framed by Earthly Yours’ lime- plastered finishes and an acoustical ceiling by Zenith Crest Associates; Photography by Gokull Rao Kadam