David Lynch Designs New Nightclub in Paris

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David Lynch Designs New Nightclub in Paris

September 9, 2011

Silencio is a new Parisian nightclub whose interiors were designed by zany polymath (the only kind, right?) and profoundly talented filmmaker David Lynch. The club’s design takes its name and inspiration from the nightclub featured in Lynch’s 2002 film Mulholland Dr., though the ethereal blue glow lighting of that fictional club of curiosities is conspicuously missing here. More after the jump!

The whole set-up is typical Lynch: the club is buried within a elegant, respectable Parisian block supposedly the burial place of Molière and once home to two influential leftist newspapers–one must descend the six flights of stairs to Silencio before they realize a transformation is afoot. Inside, the visitor will encounter weirdly wonderful spatial sequences, from browsing in the art library and smoking in the “dream forest” to standing at the “Buddhist cocktail bars with their own bijoux cinemas” and passing through a “golden tunnel of mini-mandalas” with gold leaf applied by gilders who decorate the dome over Napoleon’s tomb. All this disorientation and sensory overload are, of course, heightened by copious amounts of alcohol.

The cavernous spaces are made highly reflective by Lynch’s evident penchant for gold monochrome, which he applies across all materials to create a game of shadows and lights. The wood block vault, which Lynch terms “organic mathematics,” add a textual foil to the sheen and flatness of the gold. A specially detailed wall finish–decomposed marble–unites all of the spaces in a dark, homogeneous vaccuum.

Lynch spent nearly two years designing Silencio, which he sees as a continuation of the tradition of Parisian salons as artistic and political think tanks. “Silencio is something dear to me. I wanted to create an intimate space where all the arts could come together. There won’t be a Warhol-like guru, but it will be open to celebrated artists of all disciplines to come here to programme or create what they want.”