Ministry of Sound: the club built sound-system first, everything else second
Most clubs design the room and add the speakers. Ministry of Sound spent its first £500,000 on sound before anything else existed.
Sound first, in that order
Ministry of Sound opened on 21 September 1991 in a converted bus garage in Elephant & Castle, founded by James Palumbo, Justin Berkmann and Humphrey Waterhouse. Berkmann conceived the idea after visiting New York's Paradise Garage, and set out the priority order plainly afterwards: sound system first, lights second, design third - the reverse, in his own words, of everyone else's approach.
The founders put in around £500,000 each on the sound system and on soundproofing the building with magnesite, tested to 156 decibels without leaking sound outside. The club's own name came from Berkmann walking past the Ministry of Defence building, having already rejected Get Off My Foot and The Ghost and Mrs Chicken as options.
From club to label to a lot more than a club
The opening line-up included Larry Levan, David Morales, Roger Sanchez, Tony Humphries and Paul Oakenfold, and the venue drew around 300,000 clubbers a year at its peak, winning the IDMA World's Best Sound System award four years running.
A compilations arm launched in 1993 with Sessions Volume One and went on to sell more than 55 million albums worldwide - a scale that took Ministry of Sound well past being a single venue. Its A&R division signed acts including Example, Wretch 32, DJ Fresh and London Grammar before Sony Music acquired the label and compilations business in August 2016.
Still standing, after a fight to stay
Between 2009 and 2014 the club faced a real threat of closure over the proposed Eileen House residential redevelopment next door, on noise-complaint grounds - a legal agreement was finally reached in December 2013 that let both projects stand. Today the business runs roughly 500 international tour events a year under the Ministry of Sound and Hed Kandi names, alongside a fitness studio and a members' club, while the original Gaunt Street building keeps running nights in the same converted bus garage it opened in.