Against the grain

Gate Two was never intended to become another typical Dubai nightclub. Built within the Club Iris complex, the venue rejects many of the conventions associated with the city’s hospitality scene. Mobile phone cameras are covered on entry, capacities are deliberately limited and exposed concrete replaces polished luxury. Rather than becoming the visual centrepiece, the lighting was designed to reinforce an atmosphere where the music and the venue itself remained the focus.

“The vision from the beginning wasn’t to create another typical Dubai club,” explains lighting designer Alex Douglas. “The owners wanted somewhere people could lose themselves in the music. Everything we did with the lighting had to support that idea rather than distract from it.”

Unlike Douglas’ neighbouring Club Iris project, which centred on transforming an existing venue through integrated lighting, Gate Two offered the opportunity to develop a visual language alongside a well-defined architectural concept from the outset. With the industrial aesthetic already established, the lighting became less about transforming the room and more about reinforcing the atmosphere the operators wanted guests to experience.

Similar thinking extends to atmospheric effects. An Antari M-11 smoke machine and Antari F-4 Fazer provide the haze needed to reveal the lighting, although Douglas says restraint proved just as important as the equipment itself.

“My initial instinct was to make it much smokier. That’s what I was used to. But they wanted people to still see each other. It wasn’t about recreating a warehouse rave, but about finding a balance between atmosphere and comfort.”

The compromise illustrates the wider approach taken throughout the project. Rather than attempting to recreate Berlin inside Dubai, Douglas instead sought to capture elements of the underground club experience while recognising the expectations of the local market. The result is a venue that feels immersive without becoming theatrical, allowing the lighting to evolve naturally alongside the energy of the room.

Having delivered nightclub projects throughout his career, Douglas believes Gate Two stands apart because it deliberately avoids using technology as the headline attraction. Instead, the project demonstrates how a carefully considered design can reinforce an architectural concept without overwhelming it.

“In some venues the lighting is the show,” he reflects. “Here, if people leave talking about the music, the atmosphere and the night they had, then we’ve done our job.”

“The architecture already had its own personality,” Douglas says. “I wasn’t trying to compete with it. The lighting needed to feel like it belonged there.”

This philosophy shaped every technical decision. Rather than filling the relatively compact room with a large inventory of fixtures, Douglas deliberately kept the system restrained. Thirteen Cyclops PixiTube Opaque fixtures were arranged in four hangs of three tubes from the ceiling, with the final fixture placed above the DJ for key light. Originally intended as individually addressable elements, the concept was ultimately simplified into four controllable lighting zones, striking a balance between creative flexibility and practical operation.

Eight Cyclops Strobe 400 fixtures introduce movement and rhythm throughout the room without dominating the audience, while four Cyclops Sparkly 480 SBW hybrid fixtures positioned in the corners provide aerial beam effects above the dancefloor. Integrated behind a series of false industrial windows running around the upper perimeter of the venue, further illumination constructed from standard RGBW LED strips on a DMX encoder serves to reinforce the venue’s industrial aesthetic. Control is handled via an Avolites T3 lighting console, allowing the various fixture types to operate as a cohesive whole.

According to Douglas, the specification supplied by Procom Middle East closely matched the design brief from the outset. “The eight strobe fixtures were the main workhorse for effects,” explains Douglas. “I placed them just above the head height of the guests on the two sides of the room for an intimate experience rather than where they are typically placed in the roof above. This meant that the guests could feel and see the effects of the pixels while also not being blinded by the heavy white strobes on those impactful moments.”

For Douglas, the deliberately modest fixture count was central to the concept rather than a limitation. “I didn’t want to throw technology at the room just because we could,” he explains. “The venue already had a strong identity. The lighting’s job was to reinforce that, not overwhelm it.”

Programming plays an equally important role. Rather than chasing constant visual impact, the lighting evolves gradually alongside the evening itself, creating a venue capable of shifting from understated ambience to a high-energy dancefloor without guests necessarily noticing the transition.

“At the beginning of the night the lighting is very understated,” Douglas says. “People are arriving, talking and settling into the space. As the music develops, the lighting develops along with it. By the end of the night the room feels completely different, but you haven’t noticed exactly when that transition happened.”