Aldo Gigli · Co-founder of the Mirano Continental · set designer and graphic artist

Monumental set designs

Every summer, Aldo Gigli designed and installed a major themed set that stayed in place all season at the Mirano. La Grande Baleine, the club's iconic bar, was later exported to Ibiza for Patrick Sox's events, and to the Café d'Anvers for the Paradise nights. Also remembered are the underwater set, which turned the whole club into seabeds teeming with fish, and the Belgian countryside, with real grass and furniture built by lumberjacks from the Ardennes.

For the Maelström New Year's Eve party, organised by Carl De Moncharline, Aldo installed a three-masted ship on the Mirano stage. The bars took the shape of ship bridges, and extras dressed as buccaneers fired confetti from cannons.

Some elements stayed permanently and gave the club its signature, such as the Mirano fountain: a metal basin, two crossed jets and a painted sphere in suspension, ringed with neon.

Preparing these structures regularly caused serious worry within the team: the deadlines seemed impossible. Yet Aldo always finished his sets on time. Systematically.

Lay-out by Aldo Gigli for the Mirano Continental: line drawing heightened with gouache and ink, horizontal format, sheets joined together. Beneath a raspberry velvet arch and a black band, a blue-and-white striped marquee façade opens onto a parted curtain; at the centre, a painted medallion and a red panel bearing the club's M monogram. On either side, wrought-iron railings, basins and lanterns; a blue carpeted staircase descends towards the dance floor. At the top of the sheet, the pencil technical plan gives the layout of the elements on stage. The set treats the room as an open-air theatre: the club becomes an Italian square where the night is played in costume. — Mirano Lay-out, the Marquee Façade

Lay-out by Aldo Gigli for the Mirano Continental, coloured pencil on textured paper, horizontal format, signed lower right “Fellini Serenata, Mirano”. On the left, a fairground booth painted red and gold, its figurines lined up beneath a frieze of blue arcades; at the centre, tall magenta and red curtains fall from the flies, crossed by blue veils stretched across the space. On the right, façades drawn in line, a curved balcony, hanging lanterns and plaster columns close the perspective; palm trees in stone planters mark the way to the staircase. The set openly quotes Federico Fellini's cinematic squares: the dance floor becomes a life-size film set. — Mirano Lay-out, Homage to Fellini

Lay-out by Aldo Gigli annotated at the top left “Traffic Prod, patriotic film, Claridge set”: marker and gouache on paper, horizontal format. A large arch edged in pink frames a draped and fringed white curtain, opening onto a midnight-blue background; two red columns on veined marble bases support a cornice of glass blocks, and two smaller arches answer on either side. In front of the stage, round tables draped in white and orange, wooden bistro chairs and an ochre dance floor. The drawing conveys Aldo Gigli's method: designing a venue like a film set, down to the placing of the cutlery. — Claridge Lay-out, Film Set

Colour photograph, horizontal format. At the centre of the club, a metal basin catches two crossed jets of water beneath a large sphere painted in blues, greens and oranges, like a planet in suspension. Around it, red and white neon tubes trace rings and ellipses reflected in the water. 1980s. — The Mirano fountain

Press cutting. A column on the summer 1992 set at the Mirano Continental: the club dives “twenty thousand leagues under the sea” in a 3D underwater set, partners with a non-profit defending large marine mammals for the symbolic adoption of whales, and announces the promotion of intelligent eco-tourism. — Park-Mail, 3 July 1992: “Ecology at the Mirano”

Press cutting. The interiors magazine traces the Mirano Continental's seasons, from new age in 1990 to futuro-sixties in 1991, before the shift to blue in summer 1992: the club turns into a Nautilus and celebrates the ocean depths. — Marie-Claire Maison, July / August 1992: “Décor, by night”

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