Fabric is without doubt one of the UK’s most iconic and well loved nightclubs. Since 1999, the club has regularly featured in many of the top 10 club lists globally. The brand is a mainstay and champion of underground and new, emerging sounds with it’s fabriclive club nights a prime example.
The club, however, unable to open during Covid restrictions has spent the time giving itself a facelift. Despite impacts to staffing, revenue streams, and the ability to serve customers, the club reopened in July with a bang – showing how a club can rise from the Covid crisis with fresh impetus.
The efforts of fabric director Cameron Leslie and designer Giorgio Badalacchi have not gone unnoticed. Since the end of 2020, many modifications around the entire space have been completed. Everything from the toilets to the chill out areas have received attention.
Room 2 has been given an entire new booth, made of concrete and fitted at floor level so the ravers are closer to the action. The booth is now centred, providing symmetry but also meaning revellers can surround the area. The sound system has also received an update, with new subs and a front loaded system for maximum audio impact.
“We cast the concrete on-site, so it has a very rough and industrial look, like a mini bunker, very brutalist, It’s big enough to have a live act inside, and there are steps on both sides where you can dance or you can even go behind and dance onstage. I think it’s a very inclusive way of having a dance floor.”
Giorgio Badalacchi
The brick arches are now exposed, giving room 2 more character and the lighting has been specifically tailored to once again improve on symmetry. These small aesthetic updates provide greater impact when utilised alongside the production.
Very much the starting point for Giorgio was getting back to this incredible, beautiful space and accentuating areas people won’t have seen before but have existed there. It wasn’t the case of us just doing a gigantic refurb everywhere. It’s been very selective and specific. It’s about enhancing certain things and adapting others that we know will work better on the night.
Cameron Leslie
Badalacchi added:
We wanted to strip back everything and propose interventions using materials that last and through time will look better, like concrete, steel, sometimes timber… We were actually keeping elements that were built at the end of the ’90s.
A strict no camera policy has also now been introduced, something that is cropping up around many of London’s rave institutions. This is intended so that partygoers are more in the moment, and losing themselves to the artists and production.
Check out Fabric’s club listings and book tickets here!
Photo credit: Luke Kirwan
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