Suspended scaffolding for sale12/24/2023 Conceived by digital media collective United Visual Artists, the production design is a marvel. In event mode, the real architecture is made of light, with beams, spots and screens slicing through the haze of artificial fog. With a 15,000 capacity alone – the total legal capacity for the whole venue – it is one of the biggest such spaces in the world, stretching almost 100 metres in each direction, with massive exposed steel trusses criss-crossing overhead from which hefty ranks of speakers and lighting rigs dangle. “Y” is a longer, shoe-boxey space for 5,000, while the star of the show is “X”, the former warehouse where many hours were lost roaming the tall aisles stacked with cardboard boxes in search of corresponding furniture parts. The loading bay has been reborn as “Z”, the smallest room in the venue with a capacity of 1,000, boasting a cage made from the steel bars used to reinforce concrete to shield its DJ booth, where latex-clad performers writhed on Saturday. On the level below, where shoppers used to roam for crockery and bedsheets in Ikea’s Marketplace, the three main venues spill off a central bar zone. Now dubbed “The Gallery”, it was off-limits for the opening – seemingly too big to know what to do with.Ĭavernous … the 608,000 sq ft space, as viewed from above Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian All that remains is Ikea’s suspended white ceiling grid, which extends into the hazy distance, giving the space the look of something from the 1980s sci-fi film Tron. The never-ending loop of neat room sets, where Klippan sofas and Pax wardrobes provided backdrops to screaming toddlers and bickering couples, has been swept away, leaving an eerie, low-roofed hall the size of a football pitch. Next door, the original shop floor is unrecognisable, with not a Viktigt or Örfjäll in sight. Once shuffled through the security lanes, where car park markings still cover the tarmac, you come to the lobby where a rugged scaffolding staircase spills down next to the old escalator, beckoning you up to a bar that occupies the former cafe – £4 plates of Swedish meatballs swapped for £13 glasses of tropical rumbull. And in just 10 weeks, Aldred’s team have done an impressive job of utterly transforming the building – while retaining just enough details of the old store to provide the perverse frisson of clubbing in an Ikea. But can a big-box retail store conjure the same gritty magic as those cavernous industrial halls? Or will the ghosts of Billy bookcases and their missing screws forever haunt the dancefloor? There’s a bar in the former cafe: £4 plates of Swedish meatballs have been swapped for £13 glasses of tropical rumbullįor the opening, the place was brought to bedazzled life by La Discothèque, featuring legendary disco divas Evelyn “Champagne” King and Jocelyn Brown, accompanied by pink-winged, stilt-walking dancers, while the likes of Orbital, Bicep and Skepta are lined up to play in coming weeks – with some nights already sold out. Their Printworks venue turned a hulking former newspaper press in Rotherhithe into a cathedral of electronic music, while their original Drumsheds took over a majestic gasworks near the Ikea site in 2019 – before it was swiftly shuttered by Covid. Over the last few years, Aldred and his team have professionalised the warehouse rave experience, taking over mighty post-industrial venues and filling them with top-notch sound systems, cutting edge digital screens and dynamic lighting rigs that rise and plunge above throbbing crowds. Less rowdy than shoppers … clubbers pass through security gates in what used to be the car park.
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