Today’s episode considers a part of the built environment that’s often overlooked in architectural discourse, yet has become one of the most vibrant sites of experimentation in recent years: the nightclub.

Since the post-COVID resurgence of nightlife, we’ve seen club spaces music festivals become laboratories again — places where architects, artists and designers, artists test how bodies move, gather, and connect. After years of enforced separation, there’s been a renewed appetite for intimacy, tactility, and collective presence. Nightclubs have stepped into that space, foregrounding not just sound and spectacle, but how architecture can invite touch, trust, and new forms of social closeness.

There are few people exploring that frontier more boldly than today’s guests: Thea Arde and Joel Jjio, the duo behind playbody. Playbody is far more than a club night — it’s an ongoing design research project that treats the dancefloor as a site of architectural inquiry. Their events incorporate sculptural objects, spatial interventions, and choreographic prompts that encourage people to rediscover their own physicality in relation to others.

In a time when digital life keeps pulling us apart, their work asks a simple but radical question: how can design rebuild social intimacy? Today we’ll talk about how playbody grew from a nightlife concept into a design studio, how they prototype through parties, and why they see the club as a critical testing ground for the future of spatial practice.

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production. Support our work by becoming a member on Patreon.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

88: About Buildings + Cities

Scaffold

Scope and limits of their remit

The AI-powered Podcast Player