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Club Noir

CLUB NOIR is an extraordinary burlesque club.

It’s a club night with DJs, 2 burlesque shows and live music.

We hold clubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London.

We are officially the biggest burlesque club in the world – with up to 2,000 people selling out weeks in advance. That’s right – the biggest in the entire world! By far! We are in the Guinness World Records. You have to experience the atmosphere of having 2,000 people dressed to kill watching one of the top burlesque shows in the world.

In 2007 and 2008 we were the biggest cabaret event at the world’s biggest arts festival – the Edinburgh Fringe.

We like Big.

Biggest of course doesn’t mean best. But we think we’re up there. Decide for yourself – check out our photos or better still come along.

In addition to world-class shows, Club Noir has been creating scandals since March 2004. We were the first burlesque club in Scotland and we believe we are now the oldest burlesque club in the UK.

Clubs are held around 4 to 6 times a year. Each club has a theme.

We are one of the friendliest clubs you are ever likely to set foot in. We’re often likened to a huge party at someone’s house. People come from all over Britain and abroad. We’ve been visited by stars such as Channing Tatum, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Paradis.

We’ve done events for the likes of Wonderbra, Chinawhites, MTV, The List magazine, VisitScotland, Stephen K Amos and T in the Park. We hosted the only UK premier of the film “The Notorious Betty Page”. We’ve worked with...more 

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Toyo Ito Icon 032

I’ve returned to the real world, says Toyo Ito.

Or he might have said: “I can now look more towards the real world.”

Or perhaps: “I now focus more on the real world than the virtual world.”

It’s hard to tell, as each time I replay the tape, the interpreter suggests a different reading of his precise words. Once again, Tokyo has thrown up a moment that unavoidably brings to mind the filmic cliché that is “lost in translation”.

Ito’s office occupies a nondescript four-storey building clad in beige tiles on a side street midway between the chic Aoyama and frenetic Shibuya districts in Tokyo. We are ushered straight from the lift into the fourth-floor meeting room, which has white walls, white furniture and fluorescent strip lights. An assortment of white architectural models and awards – notably the Venice Architecture Biennale’s Golden Lion awarded to Ito in 2002 – are lined up on a shelf. A white porcelain espresso cup, with a tiny green frog instead of a handle, sits on the windowsill.

There’s a whole gang of us here: an interpreter, a local photographer and an interpreter for the photographer. Due to a miscommunication, a second photographer (along with his interpreter) showed up as well, and was sent away with sincere apologies.

Green tea is served and Ito arrives punctually, his serene smile tinged with curiosity and mischief. The previous two times I’ve met him he was wearing red socks with large lime-green spots on them, and T-shirts to match. “I’m sorry, I’m wearing normal black socks today!” says Ito in English, laughing and slurping nosily on his tea. At this point, an exchange in Japanese concludes that the photographer should return the following week, when Ito won’t be wearing a boring white shirt and tie. Ito would not like icon readers to think he was quite this conventional...more

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Dalsouple Rubber Flooring

It's a common misconception among specifiers that modern rubber flooring is a 'natural' product. In fact, virtually all the rubber flooring on the market today is made from synthetic SBR, sometimes know as 'industrial rubber,' a petrochemical by product. In environmental terms, synthetic rubber compares quite favourably with its main competitors - PVC, and even linoleum. But with sustainability now high on the design agenda, Dalsouple has decided it's time to take a quantum leap in improving the environmental profile of its products, simply by going 'back to nature'.

Dalsouple has been a specialist manufacturer of rubber products since the 1940s. In these early days, all production used natural rubber. However, in the 1960s, Dalsouple gradually moved away from natural rubber to synthetic rubber alternatives. Given the simpler manufacturing processes of the time, SBR was cheaper, easier to process and offered more consistency and uniformity of colour.

Cost effectiveness and product quality are critical commercial ingredients, but in the new design environment they are not enough. Our priorities as consumers, specifiers and manufacturers are changing. Hence ‘DalNaturel’, the new generation natural rubber floorcovering from Dalsouple...more

Tadao Ando

“Would you like tea or coffee?”
“Sparkling water,” answers Tadao Ando through a translator.

He sounds pretty cheerful at this point, as he arrives for a press breakfast that will soon disintegrate as ill-prepared journalists ask ridiculous questions that prompt a fit of pique from the legendary Japanese architect.

Ando was in London to give a lecture the previous night as part of the City of London festival. The tone had been genial, knockabout even, with jolly anecdotes about his dog (which he named Le Corbusier after deciding he wouldn’t be able to kick a dog named after fellow Japanese architect Kenzo Tange) and reflections on his brief career as a boxer...more

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Giovanni Battista Piranesi, The Carceri Etchings

Piranesi's etchings of imaginary prisons held a hypnotic fascination for later Romantic writers, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Allen Poe. The immensity of the architecture seems to embody the workings of a great supernatural power. Below, diminutive figures appear doomed to climb endless staircases without hope of release. The sinister machinery of cables, pulleys, and levers suggest awful horrors.

Piranesi etched his first set of 14 plates in Rome during the late 1740s. They belong to a Venetian tradition of capricci, or imaginary subjects, which also feature in the etchings of Tiepolo and Canaletto. The ambitious size and theatrical perspective of the Carceri mark them out as something new.

Ten years later Piranesi radically reworked the same plates and added two new ones. He greatly increased the dramatic contrasts between the lit spaces and the deep shadows, as is apparent in this example. He made the architectural forms even more elaborate, as in the complex shapes of the arch that swings over our heads from the left. Beyond the arches and bridge in the middle ground, Piranesi has introduced a new sequence of vaults, arches, and stairs that recede indefinitely. Their precise detailing and silvery tones are in sharp contrast to his loose drawing style in the first edition. It is for these later plates of the Carceri that Piranesi is best known today.

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Pizza Express Richmond

We’ve set ourselves the challenge of reinventing our restaurants for a new era.
We’re experimenting with just about everything, from design and acoustics to service and food. Our mission? Not simply to continue to serve great pizza, but to help feed great conversations, something we believe has always been at the heart of our brand.
Following in the footsteps of our playful and eccentric founder Peter Boizot, we had no set ideas about what shape this project would take. Instead, we brought together a talented group of creative thinkers led by visionary designer Ab Rogers.
Their brief – not to lose what made PizzaExpress special but to build on it and give it a new twist. How? Through the theatre of traditional pizza making, light, colour, brilliant acoustics and a tantalizing menu.
And to top it all, we wanted a versatile environment that works well for families during the day, and everyone else at night. 

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Dwelle

The micro-home that was originally called a "shed" is a shed for living. It's in response to today's current economic climate where housing needs to be affordable and easily deliverable.

What has become apparent though since they have developed the concept, is that the design is actually appealing more to a market that aren't feeling such hardship. The demand for home offices, garden studios, playrooms and guest accommodation is growing, and the offering is substantially different to the alternative designs available.
And so as the name "shed" became less appropriate for such a diverse range of micro-buildings, a new brand was created... dwelle. For Grand Designs Live at the NEC, they will be building "big dwelle.ing", the largest structure. 
By incorporating renewable energy systems into the building, it's possible for the dwelle.ing to achieve Zero Carbon status. They have also been careful to design and specify internal fittings and finishes that contribute to their own "healthy home" requisite, to improve air quality, cleanliness and health and safety.
The architects were keen not to compromise on space standards and quality of design to achieve a low-cost micro-home. The layout of the dwelle.ing is extremely efficient and compact, yet provides a spacious feeling with a double height space over the main living area. Directly over the kitchen and shower room is a double bed deck with ample storage and hanging space for clothes. To maximise storage, one of the most important attributes people look for in a home, an inner "sleeve" has been designed that incorporates cut outs for furnishings and fittings, and elsewhere provides plenty of storage space.
This inner lining also contributes to the buildings excellent thermal performance. The (FSC Certified) timber framed walls, floor and roof are insulated using cellulose fibre (extracted from 100% recycled newspapers). The windows are all double glazed, and the shed is heated by electric underfloor heating with the option of a real wood burning fireplace.
All-in-all, the dwelle.ing provides a very unique alternative living, working or playing environment, which is eco-friendly, healthy, low cost and easily deliverable.



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