Preserved tarantulas and antler chandeliers: five uncanny hospitality interiors

A single glass-brick wall in Shanghai contains 42 preserved Thai Black tarantulas. It is one of several unsettling details Dezeen has rounded up in a Halloween-season lookbook of five hospitality venues whose decor runs from faux body parts to slaughterhouse machinery.

The selection spans a London pub, a Copenhagen brewery and a bar in Shanghai. For practitioners, the projects show how far studios can push a single macabre conceit before the interior stops reading as design and starts reading as installation art.

J Boroski, China, by Atelier XY

The owner of this Shanghai bar collects insects, and local studio Atelier XY honoured that obsession with over 1,000 preserved specimens. A wooden grid covering the back wall and ceiling of the bar area holds thousands of beetles in individual recesses. Pull-out drawers containing further taxidermied creatures double as slim side tables.

The tarantula wall does double duty as a partition. Few hospitality briefs would tolerate it. This one built its identity around it.

Oven, Spain, by Clap Studio

Spanish firm Clap Studio recreated the atmosphere of being inside an oven at this Valencia nightclub. Red lighting, stainless steel, glowing ceiling grids and burnt-looking alpi wood cladding combine into what the studio intended as a blisteringly immersive interior.

The palette is deliberately limited. One material idea, alpi wood treated to look charred, carries the entire concept.

Bar Far, Italy, by Clementine Keith-Roach and Christopher Page

Human legs support tables. Disembodied hands hold candlesticks. Torsos emerge from walls. This cave-like bar, created by artists Clementine Keith-Roach and Christopher Page, was open on a temporary basis during early 2026.

Installation curator Vittoria Bonifati described the space as being "at once church and tomb, prophecy and ruin, heaven and hell".

The Audley, UK, by Laplace

The Scottish Room occupies the third floor of The Audley, a pub in London's Mayfair neighbourhood designed by architecture studio Laplace. Dark wood panelling and tartan-upholstered chairs set the mood.

The room departs from the comparatively playful interior below. A sprawling chandelier made from deer antlers hangs above a nine-metre-long oaken table.

ÅBEN, Denmark, by Pihlmann Architects

Local studio Pihlmann Architects converted a former butchery in Copenhagen's Meatpacking District into a lofty brewery, partitioning the interior with translucent curtains. The studio chose to retain the original system of hanging rails, which the abattoir would once have used to suspend up to 980 animal carcasses.

The retention is the design move. Where most conversions erase an industrial past, this one keeps the machinery that made the building notorious.

The lookbook forms part of Dezeen's ongoing series drawing visual inspiration from its archive, following previous editions on billiard tables, wooden staircases and bookmaxxed interiors. For designers weighing how much darkness a commercial brief can absorb, these five projects mark the outer edge of the answer.