venue profile
Jalouse
Moruf Yoozooph and Freddie Achom have invested in the AV system and interior design of their London club
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ince it opened four years ago, Jalouse has been firmly established as one of the top nightspots on the London scene.With its strict door policy, the Mayfair club continues to attract the glamorous and the good but owners MorufYoozooph and Freddie Achom wanted to enhance the interior design and sound system. The original interior was designed by Mark Humphrey, creating an “art interior” concept. Its many stunning and luxurious features include a dramatic ceiling of nearly 3,000 diamond-shaped pieces of LED-lit cut crystal.As part of a revamp of the space, the owners brought in designer Rebecca James whose other recent projects range from Balans restaurant in Westfield Stratford City to Freddie Achom’s ultra-private London club Scotch of St James. Her work at Jalouse starts at the entrance which lacked the glam factor needed to make clients feel special. She describes the new entrance as “dark and mystical” with letter cut-outs on each riser of the steps using words associated with jealousy such as lust, greed, amour, zealous and love.Then, as you turn the corner, a lit snake design on the floor leads you in. A new bar area has a curved wall mirroring the shape of the bar, with a cosy, warm and inviting ambience.There are pillars which, according to Rebecca, are “a place for ladies to hide, flirt and drape”. The enclosed pillar banquettes are a take on Balinese daybeds, similar to those at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée hotel in Paris.The VIP
room now has three black-panel lacquered sliding doors with shutters that allow people to see through when illuminated by the glow of a light. Rebecca also designed new lacquered cocktail tables and a centralised DJ booth. “Our aim with this project was not to interfere with the current designs,” she says.“Rather we wanted to enhance and complement the space so the clients feel that they were always meant to be there – just like adding an exquisite new pair of shoes to a very lovely dress.” To upgrade the sound system, the owners brought in Cosmic Electronics, a specialist in custom-designed audio-visual services. Opting for a system from Italian audio manufacturer RCF, the engineers redeployed the dancefloor’s existing system to ensure it was suitable for the whole bar and lounge space.At the same time, they carried out some digital rewiring and placed the crystal ceiling under computerised lighting control. Enveloping the clientele in an improved and more potent dancefloor sound are two pairs of RCF C5215W loudspeakers — containing a 15-inch high-output lowfrequency transducer — facing each other across the dancefloor.At the same time the existing subwoofers have received further low-frequency extension with the addition of an RCF S8015 single 15-inch high-output unit, which is sufficiently compact to recess neatly under the existing seating with 1mm tolerance.These are capable of delivering 1kW of power and maximum sound pressure levels of more than 135 decibels.
Where to find it 17 Hanover Square London W1S 1HU Tel: 020 7629 8871 www.jalouse.co.uk
Who did it
Original design: Mark Humphrey Design changes: Rebecca James AV services: Cosmic Electronics Loudspeakers: RCF So that DJs can monitor their own output, a tiny powered RCF TT051-A loudspeaker, with a five-inch woofer and one-inch dome, has been flown above the console. Cosmic UK also re-configured the existing Crest amplifiers and reprogrammed the gain structure of the BSS Soundweb digital sound processing system.“The result is a clean, warm sound, rich in bass, which envelops the entire club,” says Cosmic Electronics managing director Keith Damon, who managed the project. www.barmagazine.co.uk |53