The Contra Club

A night club thrives behind a blank exterior; a closed and contained space that provides an outlet for activities that don’t openly thrive on the exterior. While this is a primary reason for their existence, it also serves as the reasons for their demise in the contemporary city. Pushed to the outskirts, far from residential neighbourhoods and governed by cultural norms and prejudices in an increasingly multicultural global society, the night-club struggles for survival, along with the activities that thrive in it.

The Contra-Club is a critique of this condition seeking to reverse the conventional appearance of the club. It attempts to subvert the appearance of these spaces by bringing them openly into the city, under a civic guise.

Constructed as pavilions that occupy streets, public grounds and parks, of varying size and capacity, they appear by night as transparent brightly lit objects in the city, that put on display their infinitely reflected interior of dancing and revelry, enabled by their soundproof double-sided mirror construction. By day, they offer an interior that remains hidden in plain sight, offering the endless possibilities of a club, as an invisible stage in the heart of the busy city.