Exhibition dates: 17th March – 9th September 2018
Photographs of Armin van Buuren’s set at Festival Hall, Melbourne, 21 April 2018
© Marcus Bunyan
Last track, one of the hardest of Armin van Buuren’s set at Festival Hall, Melbourne, 21 April 2018
© Marcus Bunyan
I have been to so many clubs in my life I have lost count!
I started going to clubs in 1975 when I came out as a gay man – a year before disco hit, with Sylvester’s You Make Me Feel Mighty Real, the first (gay) superstar of disco. What a star he was. I danced on revolving turntables with lights underneath, just like in the movie Saturday Night Fever, dressed in my army gear for uniform night at Scandals nightclub in Soho, London. Adams club, in Leicester Square, was also a favourite gay nightclub haunt.
I remember dancing to a 17 minute extended version of Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park several times a night at the Pan Club in Luton; and going to Bang on Tottenham Court Road on a Monday and Thursday night to hear the latest releases from the USA. Heaven nightclub (still going), the largest gay nightclub in Europe at the time, was a particular favourite. All around the world, Ibiza, America, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc… I have partied, and still do, in clubs. Night fever for a night owl, one who loves do dance, loves music and life.
After disco came High NRG where we used to dance for hours on the dance floor at Heaven on pure adrenaline, only coming off the dance floor to have a drink of water. New romantics, punk, and soul, techno and trance (my favourite) followed. I am a recovering trance addict. So many memories, so many people, good times and tunes – Black Box, Gloria Gaynor, Barry White, David Bowie, Grace Jones, the list goes on and on.
While this posting shows the design of some amazing clubs, and some photographs of the people who inhabited them, what it cannot capture is the atmosphere of a place. The most important thing in any club are… the people; the music; the lighting; and the DJs.
Without all four working together it doesn’t matter how good the design of a club, it will fail. You can have the most minimal lighting but the most electric atmosphere if the vibe is there: a congress of like-minded people who love dance music, who commune together on the dance floor and in the club, all having a good time. The DJ’s orchestrate this secular celebration of spirit. They can take you up, bring you around, twist you inside out. The modern temple of love, light and healing. Party hard, party on.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Vitra Design Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Palladium, New York
1985
Architect: Arata Isozaki, mural by Keith Haring
© Timothy Hursley, Garvey|Simon Gallery New York
Installation view of the exhibition Night Fever. Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today, at the Vitra Design Museum 2018
© Vitra Design Museum
Photo: Mark Niedermann
An evening at the Space Electronic
Florence, 1971
Interior Design: Gruppo 9999
Photo: Carlo Caldini
© Gruppo 9999
Discotheque Flash Back
Borgo San Dalmazzo c. 1972
Interior Design: Studio65
© Paolo Mussat Sartor
Nightclub Les Bains Douches
Paris, 1990
Interior Design: Philippe Starck
© Foc Kan
DJ Larry Levan in Paradise Garage
New York, 1979
© Bill Bernstein, David Hill Gallery, London
Guests in Conversation on a Sofa, Studio 54
New York, 1979
© Bill Bernstein, David Hill Gallery, London
Akoaki
Mobile DJ Booth, The Mothership
Detroit, 2014
© Akoaki
OMA/Rem Koolhaas
Isometric Plan Ministry of Sound II
London, 2015
© OMA
Newcastle Stage at Horst Arts & Music Festival
Belgium, 2017
Architects: Assemble
© Jeroen Verrecht
Diane Alexander White
The backlash against disco peaked at the Disco Demolotion Night at Comiskey Park, Chicago, in the summer 1979
July 12, 1979
Silver gelatin print
© Diane Alexander White Photography
Poster for the Nightclub The Electric Circus
New York, 1967
Design: Chermayeff & Geismar
© Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar
Poster for the Discotheque Flash Back
Borgo San Dalmazzo, 1972
Design: Gianni Arnaudo / Studio65
Hasse Persson (Swedish, b. 1942)
Calvin Klein Party
1978
© Hasse Persson
Bill Bernstein (American, b. 1950)
Dance floor at Xenon
New York, 1979
© Bill Bernstein / David Hill Gallery, London
Dance floor at Paradise Garage
New York, 1978
© Bill Bernstein / David Hill Gallery, London
Trojan, Nichola and Leigh Bowery at Taboo
1985
© Dave Swindells
Musa N. Nxumalo (South African, b. 1986)
Wake Up, Kick Ass and Repeat!
Photograph from the series 16 Shots
2017
© Musa N. Nxumalo / Courtesy of SMAC Gallery, Johannesburg
Volker Hinz (German, b. 1947)
Grace Jones at “Confinement” theme, Area
New York, 1984
© Volker Hinz
Keith Haring in front of his contribution to Art theme
Nd
© Volker Hinz
Walter Van Beirendonck (Belgium, b. 1957)
Fashion show of Wild & Lethal Trash (W.&L.T.) collection for Mustang Jeans
Fall / Winter 1995/9
© Dan Lecca / Courtesy of Mustang Jeans
Chen Wei (Chinese, b. 1980)
In the Waves #1
2013
© Chen Wei / Courtesy of LEO XU PROJECTS, Shanghai
Despacio Sound System, New Century Hall, Manchester International Festival
July 2013
© Rod Lewis
Interior view of Haçienda, Manchester
Nd
Courtesy of Ben Kelly
Bureau A
DJ booth inside The Club, Lisbon Architecture Triennale
2016
© Mariana Lopes
Gruppo UFO
Bamba Issa, Night Shelter for the Beach Rescue Camels
Bamba Issa, 1969
© Photo: Carlo Bachi / Courtesy of Gruppo UFO
Interior view of Tresor, Berlin
1996/97
© Gustav Volker Heuss
Martin Eberle
Tresor außen
Berlin, 1996
From the series Temporary Spaces
© Martin Eberle
Gianni Arnaudo (Italian, b. 1947)
Aliko chair, designed for Flash Back
Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy, 1972
Gufram
© Andreas Sütterlin / Courtesy of Gianni Arnaudo
Roger Tallon (French, 1929-2011)
Swivel Chair Module 400 for the (unrealised) Nightclub Le Garage
Paris, 1965
© Vitra Design Museum
Photo: Thomas Dix
Vincent Rosenblatt (French lives Brazil, b. 1972)
Tecnobrega #093
Tupinambá, 2016
From the series Tecnobrega – The Religion of Soundmachines
Metropoles Club, Belém do Pará, Brazil
Inkjet print on Baryta paper (2018)
100 x 66cm
© Vincent Rosenblatt
The nightclub is one of the most important design spaces in contemporary culture. Since the 1960s, nightclubs have been epicentres of pop culture, distinct spaces of nocturnal leisure providing architects and designers all over the world with opportunities and inspiration. Night Fever. Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today offers the first large-scale examination of the relationship between club culture and design, from past to present. The exhibition presents nightclubs as spaces that merge architecture and interior design with sound, light, fashion, graphics, and visual effects to create a modern Gesamtkunstwerk. Examples range from Italian clubs of the 1960s created by the protagonists of Radical Design to the legendary Studio 54 where Andy Warhol was a regular, from the Haçienda in Manchester designed by Ben Kelly to more recent concepts by the OMA architecture studio for the Ministry of Sound in London. The exhibits on display range from films and vintage photographs to posters, flyers, and fashion, but also include contemporary works by photographers and artists such as Mark Leckey, Chen Wei, and Musa N. Nxumalo. A spatial installation with music and light effects takes visitors on a fascinating journey through a world of glamour and subcultures – always in search of the night that never ends.
Night Fever opens with the 1960s, exploring the emergence of nightclubs as spaces for experimentation with interior design, new media, and alternative lifestyles. The Electric Circus (1967) in New York, for example, was designed as a countercultural venue by architect Charles Forberg while renowned graphic designers Chermayeff & Geismar created its distinctive logo and font. Its multidisciplinary approach influenced many clubs in Europe, including Space Electronic (1969) in Florence. Designed by the collective Gruppo 9999, this was one of several nightclubs associated with Italy’s Radical Design avant-garde. The same goes for Piper in Turin (1966), a club designed by Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi, and Riccardo Rosso as a multifunctional space with a modular interior suitable for concerts, happenings, and experimental theatre as well as dancing. Gruppo UFO’s Bamba Issa (1969), a beach club in Forte dei Marmi, was another highly histrionic venue, its themed interior completely overhauled for every summer of its three years of existence.
With the rise of disco in the 1970s, club culture gained a new momentum. Dance music developed into a genre of its own and the dance floor emerged as a stage for individual and collective performance, with fashion designers such as Halston and Stephen Burrows providing the perfect outfits to perform and shine. New York’s Studio 54, founded by Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell in 1977 and designed by Scott Bromley and Ron Doud, soon became a celebrity favourite. Only two years later, the movie Saturday Night Fever marked the apex of Disco’s commercialisation, which in turn sparked a backlash with homophobic and racist overtones that peaked at the Disco Demolition Night staged at a baseball stadium in Chicago.
Around the same time, places in New York’s thriving nightlife like the Mudd Club (1978) and Area (1983) offered artists new spaces to merge the club scene and the arts and launched the careers of artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In early 1980s London, meanwhile, clubs like Blitz and Taboo brought forth the New Romantic music and fashion movement, with wild child Vivienne Westwood a frequent guest at Michael and Gerlinde Costiff’s Kinky Gerlinky club night. But it was in Manchester that architect and designer Ben Kelly created the post-industrial cathedral of rave, The Haçienda (1982), from where Acid House conquered the UK. House and Techno were arguably the last great dance music movements to define a generation of clubs and ravers. They reached Berlin in the early 1990s just after the fall of the wall, when disused and derelict spaces became available for clubs like Tresor (1991); more than a decade later, the notorious Berghain (2004) was established in a former heating plant, demonstrating yet again how a vibrant club scene can flourish in the cracks of the urban fabric, on empty lots and in vacant buildings.
Developments have become ever more complex since the early 2000s. On the one hand, club culture is thriving and evolving as it is adopted by global brands and music festivals; on the other, many nightclubs have been pushed out of the city or survive merely as sad historical monuments and modern ruins of a hedonistic past. At the same time, a new generation of architects is addressing the nightclub typology. The architectural firm OMA, founded by Rem Koolhaas, has developed a proposal for a twenty-first-century Ministry of Sound II for London, while Detroit-based designers Akoaki have created a mobile DJ booth called The Mothership to promote their hometown’s rich club heritage.
Based on extensive research and featuring many exhibits never before displayed in a museum, Night Fever brings together a wide range of material, from furniture to graphic design, architectural models to art, film and photography to fashion. The exhibition takes visitors through a fascinating nocturnal world that provides a vital contrast to the rules and routines of our everyday life.
While the exhibition basically follows a chronological concept, a music and light installation created specially by exhibition designer Konstantin Grcic and lighting designer Matthias Singer offers visitors the opportunity to experience all the many facets of nightclub design, from visual effects to sounds and sensations. A display of record covers, ranging from Peter Saville’s designs for Factory Records to Grace Jones’s album cover Nightclubbing, underlines the significant relationship between music and design in club culture. The multidisciplinary exhibition reveals the nightclub as much more than a dance bar or a music venue; it is an immersive environment for intense experiences.
Represented artists, designers and architects (extract): François Dallegret, Gruppo 9999, Halston, Keith Haring, Arata Isozaki, Grace Jones, Ben Kelly, Bernard Khoury, Miu Miu, OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), Peter Saville, Studio65, Roger Tallon, Walter Van Beirendonck, Andy Warhol
Represented clubs (extract): The Electric Circus, New York, 1967 Space Electronic, Florenz, 1969 Il Grifoncino, Bolzano, 1969 Studio 54, New York, 1977 Paradise Garage, New York, 1977 Le Palace, Paris, 1978 The Saint, New York, 1980 The Haçienda, Manchester, 1982 Area, New York, 1983 Palladium, New York, 1985 Tresor, Berlin, 1991 B018, Beirut, 1998 Berghain, Berlin, 2004
Press release from the Vitra Design Museum
Installation views of the exhibition Night Fever. Designing Club Culture 1960 – Today, at the Vitra Design Museum 2018
© Vitra Design Museum
Photos: Mark Niedermann
Vitra Design Museum
Charles-Eames-Strase 2 79576
Weil am Rhein/Basel Germany
Phone: +49.7621.702.3200
Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
You must be logged in to post a comment.