A Museum In Germany Is Showing Off 50 Years Of Nightclub Design

From New York’s ’80s disco hedonism to Berlin’s techno Mecca: how the club became high art.

Spend one night among the looming concrete obelisks, angular metallic finishes and daring art works at Berghain, and you’ll quickly realize that there’s much more to creating the perfect club atmosphere than just music. Visual design—not just sound design—has been a vital aspect of the best clubs since the1960s.

Take for example, the immense setup of the Palladium nightclub (pictured above), launched in downtown New York in 1985. Palladium was the successor of the iconic Studio 54. It fused its hedonistic disco inheritance with a cutting-edge art world sheen to spectacular effect. The club was designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and featured a huge mural by Keith Haring framed by two gigantic rigs of televisions suspended over the dance floor. Not bad for a club that boasted Andy Warhol as a frequent guest.

Or, even further back, the short-lived club Cerebrum from 1968-1969, which made all punters wear white gowns before being led into immersive 360-degree psychedelic visual rooms with themed drinks and even real-life snow flakes. How about the Grupo 999 club in Florence from the late ’60s that ran an experimental architecture school within it and planted flowers on the dance floor?

This amazing history is the subject of a new exhibition “Night Fever” currently at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein in Germany. Including images of the fashion, floor plans and even a mirrored room where you can listen to mixes from each club, it’s a vital reminder that clubs act as nodes for creativity beyond their musical output. Read more about this history and see some beautiful pictures over at the New York Times website above and here. To learn more about some of the most important clubs that shaped Germany’s electronic music history, head to our special feature here.

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