31 May 2007
When most people witness a dance club at full throttle they see a seething mass of people, dazzling lights and feel the pound of the music. When Stef van Dongen and Alijd van Doorn do the same they see energy expenditure and ways to save it. When the duo met - the former the founder of Enviu, a Dutch not-for-profit organisation that aims to give access to market for eco design products, the latter head of research and development at Dutch architects Doll - they were looking for a practical means of bringing sustainability issues to young people.
One challenge, they saw, was to made clubbing eco-friendly - a challenge because, as Dongen puts it, "it is the one place above all where you'd be forced to make sustainability sexy. Clubs are about fun, flirtation, 'cool' and, with what is still a strong treehugger image, it's hard to think about sustainability in the same terms. And yet dance clubs have enormous environmental impact."
Indeed, research conducted by Enviu calculated that an average-size club, open three nights a week, consumes 150 times the energy a four-person family does in a year. So they set about developing designs that would change that. "There's a need in clubbing for a new layer of experience and sustainability could be that," suggests Van Doorn. "Clubbing is very consumerist. It's perhaps the ultimate consumerist activity. So I think the time is right for it to make changes."
The partnership is well placed. Rotterdam, where the two companies are based, already has a very pro-green clubbing scene. One of the city's more popular art space/clubs is Worm, which operates what its founder Mike van Gaasbeek describes as a 90 per cent recycled "plug and play" construction system that allows the venue to be erected in disused buildings: the walls are made from estate agents' boards, the toilets from oil drums, the seating in its cinema space is made from reclaimed car seats.
But Enviu/Doll plan to take eco-clubbing to a new level. The collaboration has resulted in a number of systems, currently in development, that could minimise the footprint of clubbing. Some of the technology is already available but has yet to be applied to clubs. For example, the principles of acoustic design are based around the same as those applied to Roman amphitheatres, where the sound is encouraged to bounce off surfaces, thus allowing music to be played at a considerably reduced volume (and requiring a lower amplification wattage). Less ancient, but no less innovative, the lighting uses the same LED technology found in car tail-lights. Enviu/Doll have also developed their own systems. They have proposed, for instance, a "Relax Roof", utilising the roof space of clubs to provide an area to smoke in (well, this is Holland) and which also incorporates small tubes in which to collect rain water, which is then heated by sunlight to provide warm water to the wash basins within the club below.
"But it's not just about architecture and design," suggests Dongen. "The key is to utilise the interaction of clubbers with the environment. I love dancing and know that in the clubbing community you're forced to try to connect sustainability to self-interest and playfulness, somehow. I think the best way to do that is to make them part of the solution."
Indeed, the cleverest ideas re-channel the latent energy expended as a product of clubbing's main activity: dancing. Certainly, rainwater is not the only source of water. As Van Doorn point out, one thing clubbers do a lot of is sweat. Loaded with warm perspiration, the air rises, where it is sucked out of the space, passed through a cooling chamber where it condenses and can then be used to flush the lavatories.
Most inventive of all is the development of a dance floor that converts the movement of clubbers on it into electricity. The first prototype floor, which will be completed next month and made available this summer, uses a simple electro-mechanical system where dancers squeeze a surface membrane in the floor which works a flywheel to generate voltage, which is then fed back into the system to light the dance floor up. Enviu/Doll are working on boosting the floor so that surplus electricity can then contribute to powering the sound system, lighting or air conditioning. The harder the clubbers are dancing, the higher the rate at which the air con will operate. The floor, which will initially launch as a modular system to encourage club promoters to invest in it (they will be able to transport it between venues), moves very slightly during the process, "but it feels pretty good", says Van Doorn. "We've tested our models in the office."
Other systems have been examined - ones that require dancers to step on buttons or that use vibration, for instance (so that sound waves also contribute to the electricity generation). A later version of dance floor under consideration may use the new technology of piezoelectricity - a system that uses crystals which, when placed under pressure, give off a small voltage. For the moment this technology is prohibitively expensive and loses efficiency unless you can predict where those dancing feet will fall (Nike has developed a running shoe that works using the same principle because the heel strike with every step is consistent), though the commercial potential of Enviu/Doll's idea - which could equally be used for the floors of gyms, airports or anywhere where there is a high footfall - is considerable.
The Sustainable Dance Club, as Enviu/Doll are calling the project, has even tested a permeable substance that could be used to separate the men's and women's toilets. If someone has taken your fancy, you can post them a note in a bottle through the spongy 'Flirt Wall'. "A bottle becomes a trophy - the more bottles you have at the end of the evening, the better you've done," says Van Doorn, your score being totted up at the in-club recycling point. "Admittedly, that's one of the crazier ideas. But the point is that clubbing has to remain a fun experience. You can't start telling people it's wrong, that they're using so much electricity or water enjoying themselves."
Dongen is convinced that once the notion of green clubbing catches on demand for it will spread quickly. Inspiring interest in the short term, however, has been a slow process. Late last year, Enviu/Doll hosted Critical Mass, their first Sustainable Dance Club evening, in Rotterdam, to present their plans and trial a few of the ideas - including the LED lights, rainwater-flushing toilets and even a system that purified urine into drinking water. The beer must have sold well that night, but the presentation received a warm reaction from 1,400 clubbers. A second event using their modular system will happen this summer, with it likely to be spotted on the European festival circuit.
More problematic has been persuading club promoters to take up the Sustainable Dance Club's ideas. Large clubs may be owned by breweries with their own agenda - selling bio-beer typically not being among them - or corporate organisations slow to change. Even though a fully sustainable club would offer savings of up to 60 per cent of normal running costs, "most small club promoters have a short-term vision of managing finances," says Van Doorn. "Clubs often have a short lifespan, so the willingness to invest in environmental design is not high. They also need to get used to the idea that clubbing and sustainability can go together and that's it's not a gimmick."
Perhaps it is the gimmick that will finally see the launch of the first club in which all of Enviu's and Doll's ideas are put in place. Dongen and Van Doorn point out the marketing potential in being the world's first fully sustainable club.
And indeed, the local government of the city of Rotterdam, which recently joined the Clinton Climate Initiative and is pioneering in its attitude to green issues, has expressed serious interest in financing the first such club, to open next year. Word is travelling fast: the sustainable dance club team is also meeting with club promoters from Milan, New York and Melbourne. Dongen and Van Doorn see the sustainable club format as being standard within a decade as the club generation becomes the leading edge of the push for environmental action in all areas.
http://environment.independent.co.uk/lifestyle/article2600307.ece
