Piper - Night Club Florence

Model    Multimedia  Night View   Piper Club   Atelier ZZiggurrat    Italy   1967

The building is a sort of a magic box with striking light effects , experimental electronic
sounds, artificial materials and colours , visual and physical movement, all presented to
the visitors in the form of a visual spectacle. The blue-stone Renaissance Piazza’s floor
has been removed, the ground excavated to a depth equivalent to thirty feet.
In this below the ground void a variety of visual and sensorial events are programmed.
The luminous and artificially lit enclosed corridor brings the visitors into the interior
of the club. Flushing rings of lights follow the guest’s body movements while walking
through the metallic transparent skin of the elevated bridge-tunnel.

The Piper, Night Club does not follow a pre conceived set of shows for the public
entertainment and does not promote in time a repetitive agenda of planned and fixed
events.

The building is in itself the event in the making because of the visitors active
participation and activation of the random events available and only partially
organized by the Club .
The environments are made of “intelligent" components that initiate specific sensorial
tasks. Such tasks can or cannot be followed by the visitors.’The building is a sort of a
machine with random performances’ .The physical parts of the building interiors when
broken or abused can be easily fixed or replaced.
The main environment is the crowd of visitors and their energy in space.
There are five environments:
1) The Dance Music Environment.
2) Circulation Environment.
3) Pop Art environment.
4) Parking Environment.
5) Poetry Environment.

This ambitious design for a public and multifunctional entertaining Night Club or Piper
Club as it is called in Italy, provides all the emotions of a digital electronic world in a
striking contrast with the contemplative architecture of the Brunelleschi square of S.S
Annunziata in Florence, Italy

The components of the Piper Club if explained are:
1) Dance Music Environment. The main space of the project. The dancing platform
and its metal cage-like enclosure. While music is playing individual parts of the
floor, walls and ceiling-space move independently one from the other at different
speeds.
The floor when not used for dancing can acquire other configurations to
Become, at times a sitting lounge for the many or a dynamic exhibition space or
The support for an art installation. Theatre , rock music , fashion shows , music,
artistic performances , small concerts , exhibitions of any kind ,business , political
cultural meetings and discussions and many others uses are possible for such
space .

2) Circulation Environment. People move. All corridors , bridge tunnels , floors
are put visually in motion in an attempt to increase or decrease real body
motion. There are no places where one can formally rest or seat while the Piper
Club is in operation.
The design of these spaces reflects criteria‘s that very little have to do with the
rationality of human orderly motion. People’s motion is one of the many visual
spectacles recorded not the most important.
3) Pop Art Environment. Labyrinth There are specific spaces with a theme. One
of them is the Labyrinth . In this environment the illusion of getting lost and
visually trapped becomes the focus.
The floor gives you the impression of rotating while throwing you out of balance
and orientation. The labyrinth on the other end recognizes the single individuals
passing through its space and calls them by name or others.
4) Parking Environment. The most interesting cars are selected at entry and lifted
and exhibited in steel cages and as design pieces, they become part of the overall
spectacle.
5) Poetry Environment. This environment is an interactive poetry machine. The
machine talks to you in rimes with quotations from texts of work from known
writers and poets. You can alter the text or other. Image projections are part of
this environment.

Location
Florence Italy
Competition
1968
Scope of Services
Chief Designer
Construction Cost
N/A
Gross Floor Area
40,000.00 SF