Following the success of Swingers’ two London locations in The City and West End, we were thrilled to be commissioned again to design their first US venue in Washington DC.

Swingers Dupont Circle is based on a quintessential 1920s English country golf club. Featuring two 9-hole crazy golf courses, a clubhouse, a patio, four cocktail bars and some of Washington DC’s best street food vendors Lil’SUCCOTASH, Kneadza Pizza, tuTaco and Mah De Zahr.

Featuring immersive, multi-sensory, whimsical elements, Swingers DC provides guests with a theatrical and high-end entertainment experience to enjoy with friends, family or colleagues.

One of the star features is a 30ft clocktower, the top a feature of the ground floor Clocktower Bar, with the base standing on the 9th hole of the Clocktower Course in the basement. Guests must putt past the pendulum to complete the course. The brief for the Clocktower was to create a feature that would tie the two spaces together. An abstraction of a grandfather clock made by serene laser cut metal channels with concealed LED lighting, the Clocktower ended up being the main feature of the Clocktower course – and a visual link between the two floors.

Unusual elements of the design include the library-themed Clocktower Bar. It’s the first time that Swingers have had a street-facing bar so we aimed to design a space that would be attractive and welcoming, even if you’re not going to play crazy golf. Like a mini Oxford library with its panelling and arches, we wanted to go super bold and super simple with punchy colours on traditional formats creating a unique Swingers vibe, the bar front featuring monochrome painted books.

“When designing large spaces like Swingers DC, we always strive to balance a sense of intimacy with grand scale – in a way that always feels as if exactly the right amount of people are inside. So it works dynamically with just a handful of people on a Monday lunchtime or rammed to the rafters on Saturday night.

“We also like to play with scale, making things slightly too small or too big which makes the journey that much richer. A key aim was to keep the venue theatrical and fun and we also have our tricks on how to make a venue feel more premium than one would expect. It’s been fantastic to work on the design for the first Swingers US venue and we’re really proud of what the whole team have achieved!” Zachary Pulman

“Swingers Dupont Circle is the third permanent Swingers location that we’ve opened and our first in the US. With every venue that we design with ZPDS, the standard just gets higher and higher. We love how Swingers Dupont Circle has turned out and it’s been fun over the last couple of weeks watching how our DC guests react to the space. Many of our guests have never seen a space like it before and they’re having enormous fun spending time in it.” Matt Grech-Smith (CEO and co-founder)

The project has been praised by press including Forbes and Thrillest to name a few and has won awards for the Best Leisure Interior in Washington D.C, USA and The Americas in the International Property Awards.