Designed to evoke the environment of an avid art collector’s home, the club celebrates the East End’s defiant energy and rich cultural heritage, by working with local galleries, artists and creatives to assemble an extensive programme of events evolving with the seasons.
Shoreditch Arts Club is the vision of Buckley Gray Yeoman, a studio inspired by their longstanding work incorporating art within architecture. The studio - based in Shoreditch for over 25 years - sought to create a creative clubhouse for those in the creative field that challenged the tired identity and appearance of existing members’ clubs and provide a space to foster relationships between art and architecture.
The result is a collaborative design bought together by Buckley Gray Yeoman’s architecture and interior design studios, and closely knitted with local artists. The club is the transformation of a 5000sqft former loading bay that fronts onto Redchurch Street and is spread across three floors to create a flexible space and highly sensory environment.
The studio sought to support the immediate arts community and so the layout was conceived to serve as a home for an active events programme, encompassing music, theatre, installation and performance, often blurring distinctions between the mediums in immersive experiences.
Their aspiration to create a club that is a continuously developing space - where the menu, art, design and resident artists continually evolve - and where crossovers and collaborations can be had with the wider built environment. The versatile spacecultivates a genuine sense of curiosity and imagination and can serve as a place to meet, work, unwind or celebrate.
The double height lobby is framed on one side by a large projection wall enabling a rotating programme of moving image artworks and events, while three further projection walls define the first-floor space.
The distinctive layout lends itself to a home for an active events programme, encompassing music, theatre, installation and performance, often blurring distinctions between the mediums in immersive experiences. Rich colours and fabrics layer throughout the space.
In contrast, a 24-seat surround-sound cinema at the back of the space is fitted with soft and relaxed furniture characterised by warm tones, soft lighting and restrained materials such. In the upper level there is a chill out space and a meeting/dining room catering for up to 20 people in which curtains concealing screens can be drawn to aid private presentations, video conferences and roundtable events.
Buckley Gray Yeoman collaborated with local galleries, artists, collectors who have produced physical artworks for the space. These include unique commissions by emerging artists that respond to the space, major sculptural installations that have worked around existing structures, and a collection of wall-based artworks in diverse mediums: from vast moving-image projections, to sculptures, sound, performance, films, drawings and installation.