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A closer look at fabric's first major refurb in 22 years

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  • We visited the London club to discuss the project with director Cameron Leslie and designer Giorgio Badalacchi.
  • A closer look at fabric's first major refurb in 22 years image
  • London club fabric recently underwent its first major refurb since opening in 1999. Like many venues in the UK, fabric shut its doors in March 2020 and didn't open them again until July 2021. This interim period involved a lot of setbacks, soul-searching and cuts to staff. But it also provided an unexpected opportunity to dramatically revamp the club for the first time in 22 years. The refurb, a collaborative effort spearheaded by fabric director Cameron Leslie and designer Giorgio Badalacchi, began at the end of 2020. Changes range from subtle tweaks to complete overhauls, with work done all over the club, including the foyer, the toilets, Room 1, Room 3 and the VIP Mezzanine. In the Sunken Bar, the iconic beds have been replaced with chain-swing seats.
    The main update is to Room 2, which has been fitted with a new, concrete DJ booth built at floor level. It backs onto the stage at the far end of the room, allowing dancers to surround the artist. The booth has been centred to give the space symmetry. "We cast the concrete on-site, so it has a very rough and industrial look, like a mini bunker, very brutalist," Badalacchi told Resident Advisor. "It's big enough to have a live act inside, and there are steps on both sides where you can dance or you can even go behind and dance onstage. I think it's a very inclusive way of having a dance floor." The soundsystem in Room 2 has also been completely rebuilt, with new subs and a more front-loaded system. The old lighting trusses have been removed, exposing the original brick arches behind, and replaced with new lights, which combine with the booth to enhance the symmetry.
    "Very much the starting point for Giorgio was getting back to this incredible, beautiful space and accentuating areas people won't have seen before but have existed there," Leslie told RA. "It wasn't the case of us just doing a gigantic refurb everywhere. It's been very selective and specific. It's about enhancing certain things and adapting others that we know will work better on the night." Badalacchi added: "We wanted to strip back everything and propose interventions using materials that last and through time will look better, like concrete, steel, sometimes timber... We were actually keeping elements that were built at the end of the '90s." In addition to the refurb, fabric has introduced a "strict" no-camera policy for attendees, which echoes a rule enforced when the club first opened in 1999. The programming format is also changing slightly, with more genre-bending FABRICLIVE events on Fridays, more techno-focussed events on Saturdays and more 24-hour parties, similar to the club's annual birthday marathons. "Again, it's a bit like the phones," Leslie said. "It's about us reestablishing some of the principles and hard-coded DNA that's in fabric and reinforcing it in a way that perhaps we haven't in the last few years." Here are some more photos of the refurb.
    At the end of July, fabric hosted a marathon reopening weekend. Read about the Saturday night in our recent Return Of Events feature. Photo credit: Luke Kirwan Track: AQXDM - "Requiem" / "The Good Old Days Are Tomorrow" [Houndstooth]
    Club: fabric
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