Night clubs, with their increasingly sophisticated mega sound and lighting systems, don’t rate well in terms of the notion of energy saving. So how can waste be minimised, while continuing the tradition of clubbing in times of recession and global warming?

One way of resolving the problem has been found by Club WATT, designed by Kossmann. dejong in collaboration with Döll – Atelier voor Bouwkunst, recently opened in The Netherlands, a country that by tradition and necessity has always been attentive to environmental issues. The project is based on a pure and simple notion of common sense: “no waste”. Nothing is thrown away, not even the energy produced by those dancing the night away.

Thanks to an innovative application based on electromechanical technology, the dance floor converts the movements of the clubbers (up to 1,400) into electricity. With this device and other sustainable solutions, the night club in Rotterdam manages to make savings of 30 per cent on the power needed to run it. Opened in September 2008, this “green” club concept is a project that has been under development since 2006 by a group of local architects led by the studio Döll – Atelier voor Bouwkunst and environmental research group Enviu. They have joined forces to set up the Sustainable Dance Club Company, a firm with a highly unusual vocation to promote new, more environmentally friendly lifestyles.

Some elements – the dance floor, bar and toilets – act as a showcase and their functioning is “transparent”. For example, dancing clubbers cause the modules that make up the dance floor to move downwards by about a centimetre, the weight of the people activating an underlying system. At the same time, an interactive variation in coloured lighting (designed by artist Daan Roosegaarde) communicates in real time which modules are producing energy and how much power has been produced in total.

The water-saving toilets draw water from the transparent cistern of rainwater sitting on the roof of the club allowing 50% savings in water. The bar, or rather the minimal-wastebar, is also environmentally friendly, it uses energy saving LEDs, recycled and sustainable materials and serves only drinks on tap. WATT is considered a pilot project and the company hopes to market the technology to other clubs, offering a green certificate to those who reduce emissions by 30 per cent.