Alex Petrides came into dance culture before the professional DJ career. His own biography describes playing bass guitar in school and college bands, then forming the UK Warriors breakdancing crew with Troy Harewood and his brother Andreas Petrides. The crew won The Fame Game, appeared in campaigns and toured, giving Alex an early working relationship with performance, black dance music and crowd energy before the decks became the main job.

He was working professionally as a DJ by 1987, just before acid house transformed British club culture. Sunrise, Back To The Future, Energy, the Astoria, Limelight and Legends placed him inside the London club and rave circuit during a period of unusually rapid change.

The house culture Alex knew came from clubs, warehouses and long sets in which a DJ had time to build and release tension across a crowd. That London experience was what he eventually carried to Ibiza — not just a box of records, but an approach to pacing and dancefloor energy developed in British clubs.

In May 1990 Alex packed his belongings and drove to Ibiza. He played around the island, including Amnesia and Ku, before Pepe Rosello offered him a summer residency at Space. At that point Space was already a significant venue, but the outdoor area had not yet become the institution later generations would recognise as “the Terrace.”

Alex’s own account describes wanting somewhere to play the deeper English warehouse sound during the day. Working with James Mitchell, he began developing the outdoor bar area; Space’s official history dates the key move to 1991, when Alex put a DJ set-up beside the terrace bar.

The key practical change was simple: put the decks outside. It allowed the party to continue as people moved from the dark interior into daylight, with aircraft passing overhead and the previous night’s club energy carrying into the morning. Space had not merely gained another DJ booth; the atmosphere and timetable of the venue had changed.

As the terrace became busier, Alex brought in Brandon Block. Their partnership became central to how the early terrace was remembered: informal, visibly engaged with the crowd and clearly driven by enthusiasm for the records themselves. The booth remained part of the party rather than being separated from it as a distant stage.

That partnership travelled back into British club culture. Their BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix from 19 January 1997, preserved by Rave Archive UK, captures them after years of Ibiza work had turned “Alex P and Brandon Block” into a recognised pairing in its own right.

The story was not only Ibiza. Back in London Alex later co-owned the Velvet Rooms with Paul “Dizzy” Saunders, turning the former Velvet Underground site in W1 into a seven-nights-a-week club that hosted major DJs and promoters. Alex’s own biography recalls a birthday night with Carl Cox, Darren Emerson and Sasha on the same bill, with Charing Cross Road effectively blocked by the crowd.

Alex also built a broadcasting and presenting career. His biography records work with Kiss FM, Kiss TV, Rapture TV, MTV Dance and MTV Europe, while later Centreforce shows kept his music connected to listeners who knew the old Ibiza history but did not necessarily want a museum version of house.

The important distinction is that Alex was not a later guest arriving after the Space Terrace had become famous. He was involved in building the format before that reputation existed. The terrace developed through experimentation, crowd response and repeated refinement across successive seasons.

The success of daytime clubbing helped normalise outdoor booths, Sunday sessions and parties that continued well beyond the conventional nightclub timetable. The format later became a major part of international club culture, but the early version was much simpler: DJs living on the island, crowds staying after the nightclubs closed and an outdoor terrace that now had its own decks.

That is why Alex belongs in this archive rather than only in an Ibiza nostalgia feature. He came from the British house and rave generation, took those crowd instincts to Space and helped create a format that clubs around the world would later adopt. The setting changed from London rooms to Ibiza daylight, but the focus remained the same: sustaining a dancefloor.