The march of gentrification through British cities has brought with it a steady sterilization of urban spaces. Among the casualties have been nightclubs, with the U.K. losing more than half its nightclubs between 2005 and 2016, including popular and respected venues, such as Passing Clouds in London and the Arches in Glasgow. While London’s famous Fabric closed and has since reopened, others have not been so lucky.
This was the ultimate fate of the Haçienda, the legendary Manchester nightclub that opened in an unloved part of central Manchester in 1982. Playing host to many underground and mainstream musical acts selected by Factory Records label boss Tony Wilson, the Haçienda was synonymous with the growth of the city’s acid house and “Madchester” music scenes. But the club was not just important for its musical contribution, but for its interior design, too.
Designing nighttime spaces
As a design historian, I’m interested in what is also lost as clubs close. The British architect Nigel Coates is one of those to have recognized the creative importance of clubs. As he wrote in AA Files in 1981:
Invariably hidden beneath ordinary city buildings, these clubs take on the project of the night by burying themselves. Underground, they are free to promote what rarely could
happen in the streets, to give a contrived reality to what would otherwise be unlikely, taboo, or at best, occasional.
In 1990, Coates transformed a former textiles factory in Istanbul into Taksim Park nightclub, another example of the club’s entry into the city through its derelict spaces. He belongs to an international roster of architects to have designed nightclubs, alongside the likes of Arata Isozaki, Joseph Rykwert, FAT, and the Italian radicals, such as Superstudio and the lesser-known Gruppo 9999.
In 1969, Gruppo 9999 opened Space Electronic, a nightclub on the site of a former engine-repair shop. The type of subterranean, sealed-off site that Coates advocates, Space Electronic characterized other architectural and design traits of nightclubs in that it was in effect a blank canvas: a black-walled container that came to life when its lights, projectors, and speakers were switched on each night.
Its movable furnishings made for a multifunctional and participatory space, the dance floor used for everything from theatre performances to experimental architecture classes—even a vegetable garden. Like all nightclubs, Space Electronic was different every night, its design a means to generate experiences codesigned by those who frequented it.
This aspect of architectural creativity has been largely marginalized in architecture and design history, limiting our understanding of the creative significance of nightclubs for both their creators and those that experience them every weekend. The Haçienda established Kelly’s reputation as a designer and fed into his subsequent work, as can be seen in his yellow-and-black-striped industrialist design for the Gymbox chain.
Clubs’ cultural cross-pollination
The Blitz club in Soho, frequented during its heyday in the 1980s by fashion students from London’s art schools and the likes of Boy George and Spandau Ballet, provided a platform for fashion experimentation that fed into mainstream dress culture. Today, venues, such as the Bussey Building and Corsica Studios in South London, exemplify how clubs have been incorporated into multipurpose venues that are able to showcase multidisciplinary creative activities of all kinds.
Catharine Rossi is an associate professor in design history at Kingston University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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