Mutual Toleration:
Nightclub Interior Design & Underground Spaces

These types of nightclubs appear to be a hangover from the traditional lounge clubs of the 60s and 70s. Getting half swept up in the rave-quake of the 90s, these ill-designed interior spaces couldn't quite catch up with the excessive wear and tear of all-night dancing to music such as house and techno. Welcome bouncy floors, gaudy wallpaper, and bathroom attendants selling cheap cologne and chewing gum. 

Lounge clubs were a seated affair where couples would sit on small tables and expect to be entertained by a singer or performer. This type of couple-focused entertainment spread across the nation and became a mainstay in holiday resorts like Butlins and Pontins. As music genres like Soul and Disco began to emerge in the 70s, tracks could be seamlessly mixed into one another by a DJ, enabling the record to appear to never stop playing. This was a radical change for the British public, and so as the entertainer became the DJ, the lounge became the dancefloor, and most importantly - the couple became the individual.

Although the early days of nightclubbing in Britain can be traced back to the 18th century, it’s no mean feat to be the longest withstanding nightclub in the country, and it’s an accolade that can be claimed by the Acapulco in Halifax, Yorkshire. Opened in 1961, the club continues to serve 75p drinks before 5pm, offering a very British inflation-busting menu of shots and alcopops. Like all ancient institutions with a mean Jagerbomb offering, the interior design is steeped in multigenerational lore, false memory and urban legend. Acapulco allegedly sold its 20-year-old sticky carpet to the public for £5 per A4-size piece.

In contrast, the post-rave nightlife space is designed to enhance our chemically augmented states, encasing us within a design that works in tandem with feelings of euphoria, dissociation and otherworldliness. Venues like Berghain in Berlin, Corsica Studios in London, and the White Hotel in Salford embrace a ‘stripped-backness’ that harks to the industrial acid house factories of yesteryear, becoming both an aesthetic and functional element of the rave experience. Rave spaces often allow us to express ourselves in an environment of anonymity through haze, large crowds and obscured lighting inviting us to blend with the crowd. Club culture ethnographer Sarah Thornton writes in her seminal book Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital; ‘These new time-frames and spatial orders exploited the strengths and compensated for the weaknesses of the recorded medium. By using new labels, rubrics, interior designs and spectacles, [raves] were rendered distinctive.’ Perhaps these new ‘spatial orders’ call for an ethereal blurring of interior decor, where walls become haze, and pillars become laser lights.

Whilst these spaces often mirror life outside its four walls, with interiors evolving to reflect the popular music and fashion of the time, it’s also important to note how these spaces directly influence the culture around it. From DJs producing music with a specific venue in mind, to punters matching their outfits to suit a venue’s distinctive aesthetic, nightclubs are a hub for subcultures to form and exist; the perfect meeting place for likeminded people. For their latest collections, Fred Perry also look to club culture and the bold interiors of British nightclubs. A zig-zag knit structure, used across crew neck tops and knitted shirts, has been inspired by a wallpaper pattern from a 1970s soul club, the bold lines reimagined in contemporary colours. Breathable for raving and built to stay neat long into the night.  

We asked Professor Catherine Rossi, a key voice in the field of nightclub design, about the way in which nightclub interiors have evolved; ‘Nightlife design has always been eclectic, ranging from the styling of over-the-top luxury to the creation of fantastical playgrounds, or the ad hoc occupation of old factories, warehouses, and other ex-industrial spaces. This reflects the multi-faceted nature of nightlife itself, as it embraces different locations, music genres, and communities. It is the industrial though that has become the mainstay of club interiors, stripped back to embrace the aesthetics of sound and lighting equipment, and the visual language of pipes, ducts, and other building infrastructure. Nightlife has been at the forefront of such post-industrial design since the 1970s and 1980s onwards, just part of its broader creative influence more generally.’ 

There appears to be no surface left untouched by the public within a nightclub, and the toilets are no exception. Toilet graffiti has been described as ‘the purest form of self-expression’, and often takes the form of confessions, rumours, or offers of sexual advances complete with friends’ mobile numbers applied with a Sharpie. Instagram accounts like @toilettestimonials chronicle this nationwide phenomenon. Sometimes, nightclub interior design can be criminalised, as during the smoking ban in Britain on 1 July 2007, when the Health Act 2006 came into force. Makeshift smoking spaces blurred the lines between indoors and outdoors, challenging traditional definitions of space and what design elements legally constitute towards indoor environs. 

In a world of oppressive club closures, and the loss of a third of Britain’s nightclubs since 2020, venues are embracing their agile superpower; the ability to makeshift and merge with the post-industrial environment, some running entirely on TENS (temporary events notices). This poses the ultimate question - where does the nightclub end and where does it begin?