urban underground
type: temporary structure
location: anywhere
year: 2003 -
client: -
status: project
project team: Mariano Arias-Diez, Marika Othani,
Valeria Garcia, Gerardo Sarur
DESCRIPTION:
Clubbing it’s a postmodern activity which concentrates a lot of the most basic human social activities in a same space for a brief period of time. Its one of the most popular activities among young urban tribes in all the urban settlements worldwide, but at the same time it changes depending of the kind of urban tribe who occupy the space of the club.
Man's activities take place on the ground. In the space they need to recall the ground, they need their paths, the symbols, the signposts, etc. Man needs a direct relationship to the ground, the building has to be a frame, a frame for human activities, a frame composed by the floor as an extension of the ground.
Programming is thus not only a process of receiving already formulated ideas and information; it is an interactive and educational process through which communities of users are empowered to ask questions about what they need, to answer them, and to seek new spatial arrangements that will best suit their already formulated social solutions.
Boundaries have to be physically absent; they have to be simulated processes of social group formation.
The 'exterior walls' should not even exist. the exterior walls are something which must be put off as long as possible. The wall seems to be a source of frustration, walls are barriers radiating restrained aggression, walls seem to turn buildings into an aggressive fortress.
The End is one of the most famous nightclubs in London; it runs 4 days a week, Monday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday. Every night the place transforms itself in a different club despite being one of the smallest of the so called “super-clubs” in London, the different nights attract different urban tribes and because of that, the space “changes” and “mutates” in different ways every night.
Three different urban tribes were identified inhabiting the space by different parameters for their mapping, such as clothes, shoes and shopping habits. The challenge was then to generate a “building” which can contain the events taking place in The End and at the same time a building which can “mutate” depending on the requirements and density of the 3 different urban tribes: Mondays nights (trash night), Thursdays Nights (summer love-gay night), Fridays and Saturdays (movement night).
The proposal included a system of pre-fabricated fiberglass rods that could act as a structure, a standardized structural system which can be built and dismantle easily and quickly in so many different locations, so the building can become an extension of the original club in other place of the city, and or, the world.
The fiberglass rods are capable of being fixed in so many different ways and in different points to the ground/site, that would create the possibility for a mutable space which could be arranged and organized as needed.
