VENUE CASE STUDY / 02
18 Hayes Place
Turning an underground car park into a working cultural venue.
01 / STARTING POINT
The space was raw. The potential was not.
18 Hayes Place began as an underground car park rather than a conventional hospitality or cultural venue.
That created obvious limitations, but also flexibility.
There was no fixed stage, dining room, bar or permanent audience configuration determining what the space had to become.
Its separate access allowed it to operate differently from the offices, studios and day-to-day activity elsewhere at The Exchange, while the internal connection meant it could still benefit from the wider building around it.
The question was not how to disguise the car park.
It was what the car park could make possible.
02 / DISNDAT'S ROLE
A flexible space still needs structure around it.
Disndat helped develop 18 Hayes Place as a distinct venue within the wider Exchange estate.
The work sat between programming and operation: understanding access, audience flow, production requirements, licensing discussions and the practical conditions different events would require.
The approach changed depending on the activity.
A television production needed a different setup from a Fashion Week dinner.
A runway show required different movement and production infrastructure from a DJ-led event.
A private party created another set of requirements again.
Rather than building a permanent solution around one type of event, the operating structure remained flexible enough to respond to the programme.
The space stayed adaptable because the system around it changed.
03 / LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Not everything needed to be built inside the venue.
Part of making 18 Hayes Place work was understanding what already existed around it.
Disndat developed relationships with neighbouring businesses including The Globe pub and Seashell of Lisson Grove, bringing local hospitality into events through drinks, food and catering support.
That reduced the need to reproduce every capability internally while keeping some of the commercial activity generated by events within the surrounding neighbourhood.
The same principle applied more broadly.
Where specialist production, hospitality or technical knowledge was required, the objective was to bring in the right partner rather than pretend the venue could provide everything itself.
The venue worked better when the neighbourhood became part of the infrastructure.
04 / THE PROGRAMME
Not everything needed to be built inside the venue.
Different audiences used the same space for very different reasons.
HITPOINT
TELEVISION / PRODUCTION
18 Hayes Place provided a setting for production of the HitPoint television show, bringing a full audiovisual production environment into the underground venue.
UNSUNG PR / LFW DINNER
FASHION / HOSPITALITY
A Fashion Week dinner brought together industry guests, food and hospitality in a format completely different from the venue's music-led uses.
MIDNIGHT RUNWAY
FASHION / PERFORMANCE
The car park was configured around a runway presentation, audience movement and production rather than conventional seating or event hire.
BPM
MUSIC / RECURRING PROGRAMME
Multiple BPM-led events used 18 Hayes Place for music and audience-led activity, showing that the space could support recurring programming rather than only isolated hires.
05 / WHAT IT PROVED
A venue does not need a single identity to have a clear purpose.
18 Hayes Place moved between television production, fashion, food, music, education and private events without becoming permanently defined by any one of them.
What remained consistent was the reason for the space to exist:
people had a reason to come through the door.
The project gave Disndat practical experience of the less visible parts of venue-making: access, licensing, audience flow, hospitality, production, suppliers, partners and the constant adjustment required between different forms of public use.
It also reinforced a principle that now informs Disndat Places.
A building does not always need a new use. Sometimes it needs a better system for accommodating several uses.
See the wider building that 18 Hayes Place formed part of.
CONTACT
Know a place reaching that point?
We are interested in buildings whose public use is becoming uncertain, particularly before their future has already been decided.
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