BigShinyThing

Icon Magazine reports on how a new legal brothel in Antwerp has called in the interior designers. Antwerp introduced a ‘tolerance zone’ in 2001, and developer Franky De Coninck commissioned leading Belgian designers Quinze & Milan “creators of atmosphere” to fit out the first purpose-built brothel in the new zone.

The result is the Villa Tinto, a 51 room state-of-the-art brothel. A safe working environment was the first priority for Quinze & Milan after consulting with the sex workers who would be using the building. The brothel boasts a state of the art alarm system, safes to store cash, and en suite bathrooms. It even has an on-site police station. The workers asked Quinze to also install red and black neon lights that would illuminate their bodies in the display windows but also hide blemishes. They also requested discreet tilted mirrors on the floors of their windows so they could vet clients as they approach and decide whether to open their windows for business.

De Coninck approached Qunize after the designer wrote an article in a Belgian magazine bemoaning the lack of design aesthetic in modern day sex work, “It’s the biggest business in the world, it’s always seen as not so beautiful. But if you show the business part of it, I think you can build an erotic style.” De Coninck has since asked Quinze to collaborate on another brothel in Barcelona.

This sanitised vision of a legalised sex trade is in stark contrast to the brothels documented in Timothy Hursley’s book,Brothels of Nevada: Candid Views of America’s Legal Sex Industry (pictures below). Nevada has had a legalised sex industry since the 1970s and Hursley’s photos of sad rooms and nylon nighties seem a million miles away from Quinze’s slick vision.

What a difference a few decades and a design aesthetic make.