STÜCK

Klub Verboten and playbody Studio announce the launch of STÜCK, a new third space in the heart of Dalston that harnesses architecture as a tool for intimacy, human connection, and collective experience. Located just off the buzzing Kingsland High Street, STÜCK positions itself as an alternative to conventional nightlife: an interim space between home, work and Berghain focussing on softness and sobriety, intentionally built for those chewed up by the heavy logistics of London’s nightlife culture.

In a world post the sex-positive queer rave boom, STÜCK hones in on the fundamentals of human connection in urban spaces, adopting a new form distilled from a club and playground - internationally, physically and intellectually.

At a moment when club spaces are on the decline across London and cultural offerings are bound to a pay-per-joy ticketing model, STÜCK offers a new mode of being, a “night-time embassy” for communities inhabiting the fringes of society.

For the Klub Verboten community, STÜCK represents its first permanent home - a design-led, modern space for exploring physicalities and future versions of kink culture. An opportunity to progress beyond the leather, spanking benches and dark rooms to adopt a new model rooted in slowness, lasting connection, embodied experience.

Trading the typical fast paced environment of sex-positive culture for an approach that anchors friendship, care, and community into a lasting architectural form.
Developed by the London-based design collective playbody, the project extends the studio’s practice of “body-centred architecture, ”prioritising proximity, tactility, and human interaction over spectacle. Known for its immersive nightlife environments, playbody approaches STÜCK as a permanent evolution of its temporary worlds: a built environment where architecture actively shapes social exchange.

Set within a former 1960s industrial building, STÜCK unfolds across two floors as a social landscape. The ground floor centres on a multi-level conversation pit of precast concrete. Inspired by Roman bathhouse typologies and designed to hold bodies in proximity, limbs drape over each other, bodies embrace other bodies and low, non-hierarchical seating encourages gathering beyond the conventions of nightlife.

Throughout, architecture and furniture merge. Custom aluminium and concrete structures, rubber-cast seating, and soft leather and latex elements are designed in-house, creating a tactile environment calibrated for touch and movement - reflecting playbody’s approach to spaces that are both structured and sensorial. Spinning saddle seats, modular daybeds, and a 12-metre stainless steel bench shape how people encounter one another, enabling slower, more intentional interaction and supporting both intimate and collective use. Across the day and evening this flexible environment hosts cultural and community programming such as ambient music, workshops and artist-led happenings.

As the venue grows and develops there are plans to integrate a permanent sauna suite into the ground floor, forming a central element of the venue. Designed in the Finnish tradition, it will include a communal timber sauna, showers, and a cold plunge - a shared space where bodies slow down together, reflecting STÜCK’s ethos of care over consumption.