Famed for its expos, financial clout and sausages, Frankfurt is rarely associated with cutting edge clubbing. With German DJ legend Sven VŠth at the helm, high design, fine dining and more than a dash of technological know how, Cocoon Club is not only set to change the perception of the city, but redefine modern club culture as we know it. mondo*dr looks inside the Cocoon...

Frankfurt is probably best known to those in the industry as home to one of the most important dates on the exhibition calendar. ProLight + Sound has long been a magnet to audio visual manufacturers from across the globe, providing as it does a showcase for newly launched products and a breeding ground for business. As a significant global player, both in terms of finance as well as expos, Frankfurt hosts foreign visitors by the bucket load but has rarely made a name for itself in terms of fine dining, chic bars or cool clubs.

This has changed in dramatic fashion with the recent opening, in the city's Ostend district, of a club which not only puts Frankfurt back on the German clubbing map, but quite firmly on the global one. Cocoon Club is the brainchild of Sven Väth - probably Germany's best known international DJ export - and is an ambitious project which has fused bespoke interior design and cutting edge technology with a specialist music policy and quality dining.

Väth, a veteran of the German club scene following his involvement at the then pioneering 'Dorian Gray' (at Frankfurt Airport) as well as the legendary 'Omen' (which opened back in 1988), has long been focused on redefining what is understood as contemporary club culture. Not only this, but Väth is keen to rejuvenate his home town of Frankfurt as 'an international playground for the electronic music avant-garde'. The enforced closure of Omen after ten years left a gaping hole in Frankfurt nightlife that has never been adequately filled and Väth, who has been touring key club locations throughout the world with his Cocoon Clubbing Events concept, set his sights on finding a permanent home where he himself can take to the decks.

The planning period for the venue lasted almost two years and involved close consultation with design agency 3deluxe in order to achieve the holistic design concept which, say 3deluxe, 'smybiotically combines architecture, multi media and graphical elements'. The result of this fusion between Väth (who has been supported in this project by long time partner Matthias Martinsohn) and 3deluxe is 'an extraordinary dialogue between music and design philosophies which makes Cocoon Club a quite unique space'.

The club is located on the ground floor of the U.F.O - a modern loft building with sweeping industrial lines. With a total area of 2,664 square metres (and an approximate total capacity of 1,200), 3deluxe have created a number of specially designed zones which bring together clubbing, lounging and dining to create a club that smacks of both quality and professionalism throughout.

'Micro' is a club cum restaurant which not only serves modern, Eurasian fusion cuisine from the venue's three star chef - Mario Lohninger, but also a program of cultural events and DJ line ups that change by the day. This area of the venue has been designed to be flexible and offers a different musical experience to that found in the main room - developing from lounge to dancefloor as the evening progresses. A uniquely effective design element here is the use of hundreds of threads consisting of a grid of fibreglass tubes suspended from the ceiling. This architectural matrix captures and reflects projected images (projected by 11 Sharp PGM17s and two NEC LT 240Ks) to create 'a weave of colour changing, multi media ornamentation'.

Adjacent to Micro is Silk - a restaurant with a difference. All food and drink is served on white leather beds amid a room of sumptuous fuscia and delicate detail which, say 3deluxe, 'raises eating and drinking to the status of an artistically staged ceremony, reminiscent of Asian and ancient Graeco-Roman hospitality'. The fusion here of high class experimental cuisine, architecture and electronic music makes for a unique experience.

The beating heart of Cocoon Club as a whole is undoubtedly the venue's centrally located main clubbing room. Here the venue's most striking architectural feature - a 360° white honeycombed 'membrane wall' - envelopes the room and acts as a projection screen onto which a range of stunning visuals can be washed to alter the mood, look and energy of the room in harmony with the DJ (21 NEC LT 240K projectors work alongside two Optoma 756 units).

This wall is punctuated with thirteen glazed 'micro capsules' which act as modern loges providing intimacy and exclusivity when reserved for VIP use.

This continuation of 3deluxe's 'genetic architecture' sits alongside a lighting rig which mimics the swirl of a DNA strand and an imposing white DJ pulpit which juts out onto the 570 square metre dancefloor like a giant chrysalis attached to the membrane wall.

From their raised position, the DJ and 'Room Jockey' (a Cocoon Club concept which reflects the fact that the VJ and LJ can work, more effectively, the look of the entire room) conduct the mood on the dancefloor.

Frankfurt based Teamtech Media Technology and Lightpower of Padeborn have teamed up to provide and install lighting equipment throughout the club. Chosen due to their comfortable operation features and open structure, MA Lighting«s control desks (grandMA full-size and grandMA micro) have been used to manipulate the nine Vari-Lite VL3000 Spots and eleven VL2000 Wash effects which add further energy to the club space.

Elsewhere around the venue, 45 Clay Paky Mini Scan HP3s have been installed with ten white versions without mirrors (for optical reasons) and 15 with mirrors included in Micro. A range of specially designed Rosco glass gobos have been used to create what is in effect a new bespoke line of Cocoon gobos. With the venue's musical element of vital importance Cocoon features a specially designed, installed and commissioned sound system from New York based Integral Sound. Integral's owner Mike Bindra formerly co-owned Club Arc in NYC with one of the Cocoon partners, a venue who's sound system was looked after by the pre-eminent Steve Dash and his team from Phazon Audio. This relationship lead to an instant involvement at Cocoon and the sound system was conceived late last year during a meeting with the Cocoon partners including Sven Väth.

Early in the construction phase, the system was conceptualised during a site visit and upon return to New York the team (which now included George Stavropoulos and Philadelphia Sound's Walter Mossetter) worked closely with 3deluxe to finalise the system for all three of the venue's rooms as well as peripheral areas.

The venue's main room system is based around JBL's Vertec line array along with Vertec and customised Steve Dash Audio (SDX) sub units. Micro features an Integral custom four way speaker and custom 18" subs with JBL room fills whilst Silk has 12" horn loaded, two way ceiling mounted speakers alongside JBL sub units. This same set up looks after the venue's peripheral and lounge areas.

Amplification throughout the venue is provided almost exclusively by Crown and products from their CTs, Macro Tech and the new I-Tech series. Klark Teknik provide EQ in the form of the DN9340 and DN9344 whilst processing and control is handled by BSS with their Soundweb and Jellyfish products.

Cocoon's DJ booths are fitted with a mixture of Technics SL1200 MK5 turntables, Pioneer CDJ-1000 and Technics CD players, Stanton's Final Scratch and a variety of mixing facilities including products from Allen & Heath as well as the customised SDX 3700. All of these facilities are available to the top class DJs who play the club regularly.

The installation, which took almost four weeks to complete, was overseen by a team who had travelled from both New York and Sydney (where Phazon Audio have an Australian based operation - Sound Lighting And Visual Equipment or SLAVE).

Musically Cocoon Club will provide visitors with dance music from the very cutting edge - 'the ultimate surroundings for perceiving the entire breadth of the components and complexities of electronic music' say the club themselves. Fridays and Saturdays will focus mainly on techno and tech-house with Väth as host and Richie Hawtin and DJ Hell just some of the names who will appear as residents. Live acts such as Underworld will also make an appearance whilst guests such as Carl Cox and Laurent Garnier will make regular visits to the club as VŠth continues his mission of promoting the development of techno. Saturdays will be slightly more House orientated with the likes of Terry Francis, Swayzak and Ian Pooley behind the decks. Cocoon's other rooms will provide alternative sounds in the form of jazz, soul, funk and r'n'b with artists such as new jazz protagonist Giles Peterson adding to the venue's musical make-up.

It all adds up to a quite stunning venue, one which will undoubtedly raise the bar for venue's like it across the globe.

technical information

light
9 x Vari-Lite VL3000 Spot; 11 x Vari-Lite VL2000 Wash; 45 x Clay Paky Mini Scan HP3; 2 x Clay Paky VIP 300; 1 x grandMA incl. Remote Control Pack; 1 x grandMA micro; 6 x MA DMX-Booster; 10 x Spotlight Ribaltina

sound
Main Club: 20 x Community 12-9 installation speaker; 4 x SDX BERTHA Bass Speaker; 8 x JBL Vertec Custom 4880 Subwoofer; 36 x JBL Vertec Custom; 8 x JBL Custom Tweeter Array; 2 x SDA SDX3803 custom high power DJ monitor; 4 x SDA SDX Sub w/2242H custom high power DJ sub; 5 x Technics SL1200 MKIV turntable; 2 x Pioneer CDJ 1000 CD player; 1 x Shure beta58 microphone; 1 x SDX 3700 Professional DJ Mixer; 1 x SDX 3701DJ Crossfader module; 2 x SDX 3000 Professional DJ Crossover; 1 x SDX 5000 Professional DJ Equalizer; 1 x SDX 8001 Input/output isolated patch point; 18 x Crown MA 5002 VZ; 7 x Crown MA 3600 Vz; 10 x Crown CTs 3000; 4 x Crown CTs 2000; 1 x Crown CTs 1200; 8 x BSS 366 DSP; 2 x BSS 966 1/3 octave eq; 1 x DBX 160 SL Limiter; 1 x Klark-Teknik DN9340 Digital EQ Master; 3 x Klark-Teknik DN9344 Digital EQ Slave; 1 x BSS 9088 ii MM Soundweb; 1 x BSS 9008 Soundweb; 1 x BSS 9010 Remote Jellyfish Control; 2 x DBX PB 48 Patch Bays TRS. Silk: 9 x Community 12-9 installation speaker; 6 x JBL Pro SB 210 Sub Speaker; 2 x Crown CTs 3000; 1 x BSS 9010 Remote Jellyfish Control; 1 x Rane MP 44 DJ Mixer; 2 x Technics SL1200 turntable; 2 x Stanton 680 EL stylus / cartridge; 2 x Pioneer CDJ 1000 CD player; 2 x JBL pro Eon 15G2 Small DJ Monitor self powered. Micro: 4 x SDA SDX 3803 4 way high power speaker cabinet; 4 x SDA SDX sub w/ 2242hsub frequency cabinet; 12 x JBL Pro MS-28 speaker; 2 x SDA SDX sub w/ 2242hsub frequency cabinet; 1 x BSS 9010 Remote Jellyfish Control; 1 x BSS 402 system limiter; 1 x BSS 966 system1/3 octave eq; 1 x BSS 366 system DSP; 1 x Crown PIP IQ USP-3; 1 x Crown MA 5002; 2 x Crown MA 3600; 1 x Crown CTs 3000; 1 x Crown CTs 1200; 2 x Crown CTs 2000; 2 x BSS 9088 ii MM; 1 x BSS 9008; 1 x BSS 966; 7 x Crown CTs 3000; 1 x Dbx DriveRack; 1 x SDA SDX5000; 1 x SDA SDX 3000; 1 x SDA SDX 3700 DJ mixer; 1 x SDA SDX3701 crossfader; 2 x Technics SL1200 turntable; 2 x Stanton 680 EL stylus / cartridge; 2 x Pioneer CDJ 1000 CD player; 2 x JBL 6215-95 DJ monitor links: