Spankometers -God save the Queen

London learns how to love at new sex academy

The hottest new attraction in the throbbing heart of London opened its doors this week: Amora -- The Academy of Sex and Relationships, dedicated to looking at love in a new light.
Stereotypical Britons may be all stiff upper lips and cucumber sandwiches rather than sexually open, passionate lovers, but this visitor attraction promises to get themout of their shells.
"We consciously differentiate ourselves from a museum: we are about sex today andtomorrow, not in the past," Amora's founder and chairman Johan Rizki told AFP.
"The Amsterdam sex museum is sleazy; New York's is rather boring," added the Frenchman, New Yorker and Harvard Business School graduate.
Nestled between Leicester Square and the famous electronic billboards of Piccadilly Circus, Amora is a world away from the busy London streets surrounding it.
Visitors descend the stairs to a backdrop of seductive whispers from the red wallsand are offered an aphrodisiac cocktail on entry.Three years in the making, Amora uses visuals, interactive displays and sound to explore and explain relationships and sexual behaviour.
There are touch screens, hands-on exhibits -- including dildos, model vaginas, and fake breasts and testicles to show how to check for potentially dangerous lumps -- as well as video screens, hand-held audio guides, life-size models, computer animations and wall displays to educate and excite once inside.
Visitors discover seven zones blending knowledge with entertainment, covering aspects of sexual relationships including the chemistry of dating, erogenous zones, fantasies, techniques and sexual health.
"My idea was to create somewhere for talking about sex, but in a very fun, interesting, up-to-date way," said Rizki.
"No-one before has ever brought love into a physical space where it is accessible to people. We have sex therapists where people can go and ask questions and there are workshops and academics host debates," said Rizki, touting the venue as "the most emotive visitor attraction in London."
All the displays are penned by one of 30 experts -- including academics, medical doctors, relationship councillors, psychologists and sex therapists -- and come with a safe sex message.
Inside the Sexplorium section, a young pair with their arms around each other watch a video clip on using sex furniture. In the Fantasy and Fetish zone, a laughing couple test their strength on the spankometer.
Londoners Chloe and Hannah, both 18, rushed to the academy. "We saw it on television and thought we'd come down. We like doing different things," Chloe told AFP.
Hannah -- who like her friend preferred not to give her last name -- found some of the plaster casts "eye-popping."
A young male visitor in shorts said: "For me it's very important that young people have all the information they need about sex, so they can decide."
Amora is intended to be a hub for sex education and enlightenment. Visitors become part of its Internet community and an exhibition will tour Britain.
School parties have already asked to visit, Rizki said, and will be able to explore the health section -- complete with its gory pictures of sexual disease sufferers -- the gallery-cum-seminar room and the library.
Rizki, who made his wealth in investment banking and hedge funds, said he recruited investors strictly from the finance and health sectors -- deliberately ruling out those from the pornography industry.
"My first drive is making the world a sexier place and helping people pick up a few tips and tricks that can make a difference to their lives," the investor said.
"I've always been attracted by 'how-to' things."
But, critics might ask, how will the seven-million-pound (14-million-dollar, 10-million-euro) academy ultimately go down in the the land of make tea, not love?
"In Britain, there is a desire to learn, and to learn about love. Shops like Ann Summers (a well-known sex toy and lingerie shopping chain) and broadcasters like Channel Four here have brought sex into the mainstream, using down-to-earth language," said Rizki.
"If it can be timely somewhere, it can be timely here.
"People are attracted to things around sex. The British public is a lot smarter than the way it has been portrayed."
Not everyone is completely convinced.
"One problem is that we've glamourised sex to the extent that ordinary people feel uncomfortable when they don't live up to their imagination," said Kaye Wellings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
"If the sex academy does that it's a shame," she told The Guardian.
"We talk about love in an entertaining way," Rizki said. "There are no taboos. We don't take a stand, but we ask you, is it for you?"
There are plans to open an Amora in Paris, Germany and the United States.
Amora costs 12 pounds (24 dollars, 18 euros) before 5:00 pm and 15 pounds from then on until midnight, seven days a week. Students and the elderly get a discount.