Herzblut
Hamburg, Germany
7,000 square foot casual dining and dance club.
A nightclub called Herzblut (“Passion”) in Hamburg’s red-light district, where the Beatles found their beat…
Herzblut is a restaurant/dance club on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s harbor-side entertainment district teeming with sailors,
locals and tourists on streets lined with legitimate theaters, restaurants, bars and brothels. “Herzblut” directly
translates as “heart blood” but means “passion”.
JMA’s client, Pierre Nierhaus, from Frankfurt, Germany brought a group of restaurateurs to Chicago and asked
JMA to speak to them at their Hudson Club project. Christoph Strenger was excited to find the Hudson Club at
once modern and cozy. Three months later, Strenger and Holsten Brewery had signed both a lease
and a contract with JMA to build Herzblut.
Herzblut was designed to feature Astra, a cult craft beer brewed in Hamburg’s St. Pauli entertainment district since the late 1940’s.
Its logo features a heart with an anchor inscribed in it, signifying the prime attributes of the St. Pauli neighborhood; the
red light district and the robust Hanseatic harbor that has attracted traders, travelers and tourists to Hamburg
for well over 700 years. Tourists, sailors, pirates, prostitutes and locals fill the streets, theaters, brothels and cabarets
like the ones the Beatles worked in the early 1960’s, although it is gentrifying.
Herzblut serves creative Northern European comfort food until midnight. There is seating for 40 at the bar and 190 in the
restaurant. Initially JMA’s designs for the 800 square meter Herzblut were modern like concurrent work for Volkswagen.
Over time the Reeperbahn suggested a more rustic design, a modern take on an old tavern.
The façade takes cues from the hulls of the nearby ships, as do the steel plates composing the e bar and partitions. The façade
is reinforced Portland cement. Rusty steel entry doors have cast aluminum-magnesium hearts pulls, three
dimensional expressions of the logo.
Two animated arches separating the bar from the lounge are clade in glass tile striped to suggest the jerseys
of the St. Pauli football.The illuminated mural riffs on the Astra logo.
Curved interior and exterior forms are composed of traditional plaster and Portland cement, designed first as sketches,
then as maquettes and then translated into digital information which was sent to Frankfurt for pre-fabrication before being shipped
to the site, set in place, and then lathed and plastered by hand.
The floor, the bar and the seating is composed of smoked oak. JMA’s designs for seating was built by local
Hamburg-based cabinet makers and upholsterers.
The light fixtures, composed of spun metal, cast resin, etched acrylic and blown glass, was designed and fabricated
in Chicago and shipped to Hamburg.
The bar wall has a sculptures playing on the logo hearts.
The back bar shelving is also composed of cast aluminum-magnesium alloy brackets with wood
shelves created especially for Herzblut by JMA.
The kitchen is separated from the main room of the tavern by a leaded glass wall that was prefabricated in
Chicago by JMA and shipped to Hamburg.
The railings are made of raw steel, suggestive of the materials in the Hamburg shipyards.
Custom barstools were made by JMA in raw steel tube for the project.
Credits
Design Architect / Interior Design: Jordan Mozer & Associates, Ltd
Lighting Design: Jordan Mozer & Associates, Ltd
Furniture Design: Jordan Mozer & Associates, Ltd
Artwork: Jordan Mozer & Associates, Ltd
Graphics and Branding / Signage: Jordan Mozer & Associates, Ltd
Kitchen Planning: Jordan Mozer & Associates, Ltd
Product Design and Associated Manufacturing: Mozer Studios
JMA Team: Jordan Mozer, Jeff Carloss, Beverlee Mozer, Bill Ewert, AndySusanto
Photography: Klaus Frahm, Hamburg