Dance Lounge

• location:
  Cambridge, MA
• Date:
  
• client:
  Private Client
• collaborators:
• project_team:
  Principal-In-Charge: Elizabeth Whittaker
  Project Manager: Silvia Illia
  Design Team: Andrew Richardson
• description:
  Due to a challenging site, located 6’-0” below a public corridor area along an open-air recessed pathway, the project needed to find a provocative way to draw people down and into the space. Simultaneously, the storefront boundary wall needed to limit the view in order to preserve a sense of exclusivity.
  
  The conceptual strategy was to dissect and re-analyze the components of a typical storefront. Through the exploration, compression, and multiplication of typical storefront components (frame and glass) we discovered a way to extend and stretch the storefront out to the courtyard as well as within and throughout the club space. This move created an elastic boundary drawing people into the space, onto the dance floor and back to the bar area.
  
  The striated surface of glass, wood, and light is rendered and explored at several scales throughout the project. As a canopy, it extends up and out from the storefront to hover above the courtyard and act as signage and a light filter for the guests on the terrace above. As a storefront it destabilizes the image beyond and creates an incomplete and provocative patterned surface. On the interior it transforms into a floor surface that widens in scale to accommodate light slots for the dance floor and directionality towards the bar at the back of the space. At the bar the floor bends up and becomes a back boundary wall, compressing the light to mark the final edge of this surface and dance lounge.