For decades, cities around the world have been promoting their nightlife scene and the designed spaces in which these activities occur. Occasionally hidden away from the hustle and bustle, offering a sort of escapism from the day-to-day-routine behind red velvet ropes and intense security measures, or sometimes proudly on display for people from all walks of life to congregate and spend the evening under the glisten of a disco ball or flashing lights, nightclubs are an example of how fashion, culture, and societal norms influence an often overlooked and underground side of architecture.

While clubs are often viewed as a sort of “abandoned” space, only activated from late in the evening until early hours of the morning on the weekends, they’re actually often intentionally crafted and curated to create highly-specific experiences, and go much beyond the dramatic visual effects. Nightclubs are over-the-top exercises in creating fantasy worlds, where the details of design fall to the back in order to put spatial arrangements on center stage. By creating various atmospheres, the placement of everything becomes key. Locations of bars, bathrooms, the DJ booth, the size of the dance floor, and its adjacencies are actually more important than the lights, sound, and everything in between.

The success of nightclubs lies in their ability to blur boundaries, push thresholds, and where parties and events could come together undercover to continue the zeitgeist of a countercultural revolution. In their most simple form, nightclubs existed long before the famous celebrity-filled parties and took on a much more conservative form of working-class dance halls. As time went on people who had united in secret in order to express themselves saw an opportunity emerge in parallel with the mainstream jump in consumerist activity and advancements in technology that allowed them to play music louder and shine lights brighter. As a way to create their own space, these groups felt the need to design a new typology, one that would only serve as a nightclub instead of a space that would need to be converted, and then back again for regular public use.

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