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[MUSIC PLAYING]
DAVID BYRNE: I think the first thing that comes to mind is
that the nightclub of the future may not look totally
futuristic.
PETER GATIEN: If I was doing a club, not to say it's a club
of the future, but it's not like I think we want to
compete with video games and like that 3-D, lasers.
I think that stuff's done to death.
AMY SACCO: In the club of the future all I can tell you is I
will merely be a hologram, because hopefully I'll be
sitting on a yacht somewhere.
A figment of your imagination.
NUR KHAN: I don't know.
What year are we talking?
[LAUGHS].
I've always wanted to do a milk bar.
"Clockwork Orange" milk bar.
That was the club of the future back then.
MICHAEL MUSTO: If I designed a club it would be the Chocolate
Factory, and I don't even like chocolate.
You would push people into vats of chocolate at odd
moments and give them a little gift bag of
licorice when they left.
I just think nightlife should be that much
fun and that crazy.
CARLOS QUIRARTE: It would be in international waters.
It'd be two barges.
One's a cage.
Everybody fights.
The winners come in and party.
When it happens it was my idea.
SERGE BECKER: No cameras, no cell phones.
Not to say that's going to happen, but if I would do it,
I would ask that of people.
ANDRE SARAIVA: It's still a place where people meet for
real, and they're not there because they've been friends
on the Facebook or they tweet or they text each other.
BRUNO SCHMIDT: I'm sure there is a must-have in Detroit,
some amazing club.
I'm sure there is.
Keeps doing incredible stuff, but we just
don't know about it.
I wish I did.
I would be there tomorrow.
ANDRE BALAZS: I think you have to try to design something
that's timeless to the best of your ability and avoid like
the plague any kind of thought process that
focuses on what's next.
-I want it to be like a game-based nightclub.
You get a chicken and the chicken battles you at
tic-tac-toe.
But the problem is this chicken's really good at
tic-tac-toe, so you've got to beat the chicken.
-I was thinking that maybe the garments could
serve drinks maybe.
It would have packets of syrup, I guess.
Like concentrate of different drinks.
And then she would press different things and then mix
the drink in hand.
It would basically be like a scuba suit.
But in real.
-I came up with this other idea of a drink system being a
little bit like a bowling alley.
And so I thought it might be quite cool if you're sitting
there to see beers or drinks speeding underneath this
transparent floor.
And then pop up ready to drink.
And then you put it back in there when you were done, so
it would recycle it.
-So I thought about creating this open
space where music was.
So it would be like, am I in the dance floor divided in
four sections?
And each section would have a different kind of music.
I don't know if you have heard about directional audio.
I think it's quite simple, but the most
difficult ideas are simple.
MARK VON ITERSON: I don't know what the future
of club looks like.
And I don't know what the future of nightlife is.
But for me the most important learning is that nightlife is
a reflection of society.
DAVID BYRNE: What if you look at history from the point of
view of nightlife?
Where people were hanging out.
-It's easier always to look backwards and find all the
reasons for why it happened.
DAVID BYRNE: You can kind of go through different eras and
decades and the clubs or the bars or the restaurants kind
of being a mirror of the values and the what's
interesting or what's exciting, what's disgusting or
whatever about a culture at any particular moment.
And then you can also look at it as they become kind of
these meeting places.
A kind of focal point for some sort of creative scene.
MADISON MOORE: Every creative group that has existed has had
a nightlife associated with it.
And I think with 54 what you see is the
kind of apex of that.
MICHAEL MUSTO: The original Studio 54 came about when New
York was in a recession just like now.
New York was a really sad place with really
*** stuff going on.
And people were poor and desperate.
Studio became like this oasis in the middle of the desert.
This incredible, hedonistic, sparkly place where you could
just check your brain at the door and go in and have this
magical time.
It was like Brigadoon.
MADISON MOORE: We associate 54 with all that is glitter, all
that is glamorous.
But the reality is that a number of underground New York
artists were rallying against 54 to create a space that was
more organic, that was more raw.
MICHAEL MUSTO: The downtown scene started saying, we have
our own stars, and we're going to promote them.
BRUNO SCHMIDT: We would go to Club 57, to
Mudd Club, you know.
We always end up in the Mudd club.
-This was like the anti Studio 54.
Just like Studio had glitz and glamour, Mudd
Club was just basic.
It didn't have a whole lot of design.
DAVID BYRNE: Yeah as far as the decor and the lights and
shiny stuff, yeah, they didn't go for that.
-It was all about the crowd, the hauteur of the crowd, the
attitude, and the fact that these were
all downtown artists.
KENNY SCHARF: We all wanted to have art shows, and the
gallery world wasn't interested in
what we were doing.
The nightclubs and the people going to nightclubs, that was
kind of how things happened.
That's how people met each other, and you
could show your art.
And it was a great outlet to put your stuff out there.
ERIC GOODE: The way to meet people was to do something in
the context of a social environment and not to be
sequestered as an artist in a studio.
That led us to open Area.
-I think Area was the quintessential club of the
'80s, design-wise.
Because every month, literally, they would change
the theme from top to bottom of the whole club.
They didn't care at Area if they were making money.
They wanted to create this art center for downtown.
ERIC GOODE: New York was the one place where you had this
convergence of cultures, people, and where you could
just do this at that level.
KENNY SCHARF: It was around the
same time as the Palladium.
-The biggest, the most splendid of
clubs, it was Palladium.
-I think it was a structural masterpiece.
When artists were superstars, the club owner said, we're
going to call on them to help design our space.
And people like Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel
Basquiat, these were the superstar
artists of that moment.
And they were all used to furnish Palladium.
BRUNO SCHMIDT: What they did is they used more or less,
have artists make a club.
And that's what we did.
We artists making clubs.
Nobody that was a professional anything.
ERIC GOODE: We knew nothing about the world of nightlife.
Working for virtually nothing just to really be creative.
MADISON MOORE: And I think that what you see when you
think about Kenny Scharf and the artists who are kind of
designing the space for their own, you're talking more about
creativity.
You're talking more about art making and the role of the
artist and creating a special space for people, in my mind.
That's what makes a good party.
And that's what makes 80's nightlife so fascinating.
SERGE BECKER: Downtown used to be so mixed.
It was incredible.
It was an amazing international melting pot.
CARLOS QUIRARTE: I think there's a lot of people who
are of the frame of mind like they're constantly trying to
recreate some sort of feeling that was here.
And by here I mean New York.
Whether it was 10 years ago or 15 years ago or 20 years ago.
I don't think we have any desire to really do that.
There's a reason why things were like that then.
It was a different time.
ANDRE BALAZS: Different times have different needs.
And these trends, these needs, social trends keep changing.
And each generation has its time.
MARK VON ITERSON: Indeed many cases the best clubs around
the world and the ones that really were iconic were
designed by people who were relatively naive and didn't
have all the history or experience.
Naivety or having a really fresh look
at things is crucial.
I trust that all these young designers will bring today's
society into it.
Almost by definition, because they will work intuitively.
They are kids of this time, so they will bring the atmosphere
of this time.
-I think the experience starts from the second you walk up.
-The interior of the club, it sets the stage.
DAVID BYRNE: We like the feeling that there's multiple
layers underneath what's there right now.
-It's all about just creating one night that'll create a
lasting impression for the rest of their lives.
[MUSIC PLAYING]