The flow of a small night club (The Warehouse, Preston)

Finally, I observed how people interacted with a club space. I was interested in seeing the natural foot traffic in a space where there are less contact points that are needed, and far more free will to wander throughout the room to wherever is best in the moment. Again, I only analysed the ground floor to see if the layout is efficient.

I have drawn a rough not to scale floor plan of the club and drew coloured lined where I noticed the most people walked through.

The Warehouse has some of the smallest floors in a Preston club, but can hold an average capacity beause of the three floors available. Even still, it doesn't take too much to get crowded inside, especially when only looking at the ground floor.

As expected the area outside the toilets is crowded within the first hour of opening and stay busy for the whole night, this causes some issues because the toilet doors are so close to the entrance and people waiting for friends outside usually block the access to the stairs in the middle and the way to the dance floor. There is sometimes congestion of people directly opposite the toilets when people queue for the ground floor bar, adding to the blockage of the stairs, although the bar area is normally quieter and peeople quite often wait more out of the way. between the bar and the side of the stairs to get out of the crowd.

The middle sectrion on the way to the dance floor has more than enough space due to the fact that people rarely linger, but walk directly to the dance floor or directly in/out of the smoking area exit. If people do want to stop, there is a small seating area before the dance floor that is 'tucked away' from flow of people. I think this workes quite well, although this seating area for people to wait would be much more useful if it was the other side of the wall next to the toilets, where crowd relief is needed.

The other seating area at the far back of the dance floor isn't used too much because people have to walk, or dance, through the dance floor to get to it. It is a good idea to have seat either side of the dance floor incase anyone feels faint etc.

Overall I feel that the first half of the ground floor is congested because the most important touch points are there, without any areas out of the way to wait in. The second half is mainly the dancefloor with works efficiantly whatever the crown size is.