The success of the Coocon Club was written already in its foundation stone.

Built inside premises designed by the architect Dietz Joppien and conceived by the Agency 3Deluxe of Wiesbaden in a progressive way, blending architectural elements and media together, the Cocoon Club hosts not only the most expensive audio system available in the world, but the worldwide famous DJ Sven Väth, too. And the list of wonders is just about to start. Are you ready to step into another world?

click here to view the Cocoon Club entrance

Sven Väth, undisputed personality and visionary of the international club scene, had the ambitious idea of redefining the concept of clubbing, when he embarked upon the project of Cocoon Club, following a long cherished dream. He wanted to make, out of Frankfurt, a capital for avant-garde electronic music, on the paths of the tradition of his legendary club Omen. Meanwhile, the city had to become the platform for all forms of artistic expression related to the clubbing culture too. International ambassador of the Goethe Institut, Sven Väth had clear ideas, as his labels “Eye Q” and “Cocoon” had confirmed already.

The Cocoon club's concept – considered avant-garde experimentation either in the transformation of space, or in the sensorial perception offered – was discussed with people coming from different backgrounds. Artists, graphics, geniuses from the product design industry and architects, all worked hard in order to find a way to literally astonish the clubbers.

While on the dance-floor, one can literally admire the gem: a 107 meters 360° screen enveloping clubbers with synchronized images, which looks like living creatures in a process of metamorphosis among shimmering colours and lights, created by 21 computers, which control 21 projectors (600’000 pixels each).

click here to view dance floor panorama

click here to view Bar and Dance floor

click here to view Cocoon vip panorama

All that was made possible with a technological infrastructure, consisting of (to name but a few....) dimmable lightings, 21 projectors, 25 moving lights, 10 stroboscopes, 12 cocoons (otherwise said, 12 extensible spaces, a.k.a. walk-micro areas), among which three are VIP's.

click here to get inside a Cocoon

Commander Sven Vath's bridge: the central control hub where he controls the complex sound and media technology of the club.

click here to view the DJ Consolle

click here to view the Lounge

By the way, the experience isn’t over, considered that within Cocoon, there are several bars and two restaurants. One should not expect to eat partially dehydrated astronaut’s food, out of sealed packages. All the contrary: the talented three star chef Mario Ingersoll offers all his experience, mixing fresh ingredients into light meals, mingling the elements of Austrian Cuisine with those coming from all around the world, creating new concepts of food. And if at Micro one can eat and dance (there is a dancing-floor for 100 people)...

click here to view the Micro restaurant Bar

click here to view the Micro Restaurant

... at Silk, a lounge for fine dining, another experience awaits the visitor, who will eat lying on big white sofas, like Romans in the past did, while tasting ten different courses, which are a bliss for the eyes too.

click here to view the Silk Restaurant

click here to view the Silk Restaurant

VRMAG asked a few questions to the Think-Quicktime team:

Why did you decide to shoot this club ? Was it an assignment ?
Since we are based in the Frankfurt area we knew about the cocoon club, the people behind it and that it will be a "mind blowing project" for the whole party scene. Sven Väth is a resident DJ well know around the globe and his dream was, to open up a club which is unique in every way.
when we heard about the project we knew that we have to shoot it.
After we have done a little research we found out that we know the designer of the club form the early days. so we contacted 3deluxe and convinced them that they must have a virtual documentation of the club and their work. The Cocoon club management was very excited to work with us and could not wait to see the 360º images and the final 360º QuickTime VR Cubic Movies. The result was even better than we expected it.

Shooting in such an environment must not have been easy. Would you tell us which challenges you faced and how you solved them ?
The most difficult part was the light situation in most of the areas in the club.
We wanted to show the Cocoon club environment the way people experience it when they would see it in person. So we where shooting the club on a monday night when we had access to every area in the club to prep it and make sure that no one would "jump into" our shoot. In these conditions a shoot took almost 45 minutes in a medium resolution. It took us until 5 am to finish the production and it was worth it.

Which equipment did you use ?
We shoot the project in 2005 and we where using our Panoscan MK I System with a 16 mm lens and PowerBook G4 to operate the system.
For the post-production, we used PanoPost, Photoshop, CubicConverter and some other "helper" tools.

Links:
Think-Quicktime.com
Cocoon Club web site