“Back to dance”: post Covid discos according to Gianni Arnaudo

Going back to dancing: but how? Gianni Arnaudo speaks

Thinking today of returning 'to the dance floor' to dance brings with it some questions, perplexities and uncertainties that design and architecture can try to dispel, explains Gianni Arnaudo, architect and author (first with Studio65 and then as a soloist) of the most radical Italian nightclubs in the 70s and 80.

Reinventing spaces, even with technology

“My post-pandemic disco has essential design elements placed in scenographic spaces, even in height, transformed into multisensory experiences by modern artificial intelligence systems," says Arnaudo.

"Abstract multicolored images that interact with people, adapting to the human presence and his movements. In an elevated position, the bar, which can never be missing, with 3D viewers, to discover new lighting effects".

Furnishings in harmony with the light system

Among well-known novelties, such as the sanitizing columns in the most varied guises, and creative proposals aimed at bringing the user back to the dance floor, ironic and comfy pieces are born such as the 'YouMellow' sofa by Arnaudo: “They are modular sofas with soft broad essential shapes and countless combinations of colors, in assonance with the light system. There is also a personal memory of mine in the "In memory of Theo dog" pouf. Architecture, like other artistic manifestations, must provoke thought in an evolutionary sense".

A virtual that mixes attraction and fear, with sweetness

Two years of forced quarantines and the use of screens as the only means of contact leave us a normalization of the use of the virtual, which, in this case, leaves the house to reach the track.

"The result of the coexistence between these two worlds, increasingly normal especially for young people", continues Arnaudo, "is a dematerialized reality, with the use of recent digital technologies ( machine learning and real time render ) that underline the paradoxes of our living in this time, where attraction and fear of others coexist together with a need for sweetness”, continues Arnaudo.

The irony to interpret

"Irony is an ancient tool of analysis and criticism, it is part of my DNA and has always been reflected in my architecture and design works," continues Arnaudo. "Starting with the objects for the Multiple Gufram dei Fratelli Gugliermetto and for all the others, the table Déjeuner sur l'Arbre , in the collection permanent collection of the Center Pompidou, and those designed for Slide, such as the coffee table Tea Time , in the gold version acquired from the permanent collection of the ADAM Museum in Brussels".

The concept of the club developed from 1960 to 1990, is now history. It was celebrated by the Night Fever: Designing Club Culture exhibition, inaugurated in 2018 at the V & amp; A Museum in Dundee and organized by the Vitra Design Museum, with which Arnaudo has been collaborating for years.

"My discotheque projects, exhibited in the exhibition, are transgressive assemblages of all the symbols of power and decidedly ironic: the" Paolina B "- whose name was the verse of the famous" Jackie'O " of Rome - it was a flashy set of irreverent quotes and spectacular effects, which I had created to mock the cult of kitsch opulence of the 1980s. Obviously it was a huge success and a young Albert of Monaco also came to see it shortly after the inauguration" , concludes Arnaudo. His architectures are manifest, ideas expressed with the force of the POP language.