“and those that were seen dancing were thought to be mad by those who could not hear the music� - nietzsche
BOOK ONE Eleanor Glenton 1307901
Introduction Lourde’s surge to the top of the charts has revealed the depth and potential of New Zealand musical talent. Record labels and talent scouts are taking an interest in Kiwi musicians like never before, and considering their talent for a possible international stage.
This topical intensification in the attention paid to our music industry, gives us the opportunity to celebrate the strength of the talent and invest in developing Kiwi music. We have a large underground music scene which operates throughout Auckland, often in obscure bars or city fringe locations. Musicians struggle to bridge the gap between the underground music scene to becoming more well-known, despite the array of talent.
This complex will build on these ideas to form a series of spaces that are directed at developing, embracing and celebrating Kiwi music, and particularly involving spaces for underground and fringe elements to be exposed within the central city. The different elements of the transient population that flow through the central city location are ideal for inviting speculation and involvement in experiences that they may not have had before.
The Auckland Council wishes to invest in developing the city centre a pedestrian-friendly hub of industry, intensifying the CBD location, and has present a vision for development in the City Centre Master Plan. But simply presenting a myriad of access points is not enough to stimulate a sense of character and involvement in the cityscape that goes beyond the transient environment of a thoroughfare.
Utilising music as a mechanism to add character beyond that of an inviting facade is linked to the idea that music is a medium that subtly seeks into the consciousness, or is sometimes unavoidably obvious. A place’s music can tell more about the people that inhabit it than yards of blank facades, tacky souvenir shops, and pervasive chain retail stores. Through music we can deriving a sense of local identity, through the inclusion of underground and fringe elements as well as more well-known. Pairing the emotion of the medium with the reactivity of an interactive architectural system will span the gap between access and engagement, enabling the tendrils of sound to float through the intangible spaces of gathering and busy walkways, as an invisible addition to city character.
The programmatic elements of the complex allow the division of public and private spaces; allowing both the public experience and enjoyment harbour-side venue as is necessary for the threshold impression of Auckland city as visitors arrive, and the enclosed spaces needed for the development of the New Zealand music as a commodity and expression of identity and character.
Divergent strands of the complex; reactive, engaging, public/private, inclusive/exclusive, ephemereal/concrete, contrast to reflect the complexity of the site, and the users varied purposes, and weave together to form the architectural equivalent of an invitation to experience a little bit of New Zealand through it’s people and music.
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Cnr Queen St & Custom St
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Queen St
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Cnr Albert St & Quay St
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Albert St
ENGINE ROOM -
WATER CITY - Increased
HARBOUR WINDOW - rede-
GREEN LINKS - Plan
intensifying
edge, slowly phasing out
Federal and Hobson streets.
green spaces in the city
basically developing / the CBD area through business /
innovation hubs etc.
developed on the harbour
wharf operation that could be performed elsewhere and
creating a more pedestrian & visitor friendly waterfront with user-friendly typologies/ services
velopment at the foot for Albert, Current poor ‘gateway’ to the city for visitors. Potential to greatly enhance this area.
The predominant ideas for the
redevelopment of the forecourt
in front of the ferry building and for upgrading Quay St through various design mechanisms.
to link up established
with linear parks. Im-
proves pedestrian links and connection to the city. The most impact
from this development
on the site will be from the Quay St upgrade.
The idea of a HUB–
Targets the ideas of access and a thoroughfare; this is an excellent site. The CBD catchment and wide user base provides a platform for a complex with a varied programme that is flexible enough to target the different segments transient thoroughfare from morning to night. The idea of the MEETING PLACE-
Extend the function of the complex to a destination as well as an access point to the city. The lack of public places to meet and gather, for social
interaction of a day-to-day level, a place to share and congregate, or take a break from city-life. At the moment we have a few parks that provide this function of a 'break', otherwise the closest answers are libraries, museums, or perhaps malls in some situations. LINKING the ideas –
We are increasingly connected, be that on a physical level in terms of travel, or on a digital level. But we should not 'confuse accessibility for
engagement,' and so we should take the best parts of both concepts, while noting that a strong access point will not necessarily leave any lasting
impression, nor a gathering place be particularly successful without the former, but combining the two for a livable, engaging architectural addition to the conversation on the waterfront of the city.
Investigating site characteristics and future developments, three pieces of site evidence stood out; the supreme accessibility of the site, the need for a development that was engaging and enriches the character of the cityscape, not simply a performs as a transient space for thoroughfare, and finally the concentration of pedestrian friendly and green space development within the space. As a threshold site within the CBD, with access from the harbour, trains, buses and the concentration of offices and services, I determined the need for a ‘gathering place’ within the site. Armed with this vague, open idea, an analysis of fantastical ‘gathering places’ floated the possibility of a complex centred around music. Music is a medium that is intensely emotive, subjective, and traverses language barriers, answering a deeper instinct within the human psyche. Answering the possibility of engagement without requiring explanation, music is often an easy connection to the character of a place.
As an over-arching idea of programme, a music complex is a proposition to stimulate the music scene, and engage the diverse user types in the city, which vary from morning to night. But simply determining an overall programme offers few clues to designing this development.
“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race
long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why
we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our
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souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.� Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
Delving into the field of literature, I found characters within literature who had personal associations with music. I found a figure of interest to further this design; Dazzler. A fictional comic book character, Dazzler has interesting qualities or abilities that could contribute to the design of a music-based complex.
Dazzler is a character from the Marvel comics, a mutant with the ability to convert sound vibrations into light and energy beams. This possibility of dynamic architecture, responsive to the human aspect of the environment, and sound / music specifically, could engage, and interact with users. The possibilities of the interplay of light and shade, the stylized aesthetic, the preference of minimal explanatory text in a storybook fashion could lead into design ideas for the complex.
The surrealist/fantastical aesthetic of comic book graphic art could perhaps be utilised as a design characteristic.
A sweet melody drifts softly across the plaza. A figure is silhouetted against a rippling facade made of light, that cascades in pools and waves of soft illumination. The dark form of the cellist gently draws his bow across once more, and then lightly touches the strings to quiet them. A scattered applause fills the comfortable space left as the music fades, and the facade ripples again like stones skipped across the water. A weak breeze stirs the foliage that twines itself around the garden plaza.
The rumbling, deep beat pounds through the room. Figures dance, faces obscured in the darkness, a dim blue light wreathing around shuffling feet. The beat shudders through the walls, whose elastic surface absorbs the trembling vibrations, pooling the energy into power. The charge travels up through the intelligent circuitry, through the hidden veins and arteries that keep the complex breathing. The collection of power follows the twists and turns, changing pathways until it finds the path it wishes to follow. The energy flows into the discreet mechanisms controlling one of the ethereal floating bridges, and it turns slowly, shifting across the vaulted space. The bridge settles to link up with a different passageway, exuding an innocence as if it had never lead anywhere else.
A secret garden, with sculpted niches for whispering and umbrellas shading open spaces beneath a cloudless sky. Sun-warmed benches stretch languidly before a little raised stage, which beckons hopefully towards the arriving musicians. As the darkness approaches, rich yellow light falls from suspended lanterns, pooling in lively puddles on the ground.
Dark, flickering. Warm with bodies, full of life. Bass pounding. Lights dance in step with the beat. The drummer’s arms flex with effort, veins popping to the surface. The barest bead of sweat drips down the vocalist’s temple. A cheeky grin lights the face of a girl at the front of the crowd, swaying in time to the music.
Free of juxtaposition & contrast. One of the only ‘clean slates’ in the complex, deriving it’s eccentricity from textural surface and subtle plays of composition, leaving the room quiescent to be filled instead with the intense concentration and emotional performances.
Lights dapple across one of the interactive walls, as one of the artists makes a change to a record. Quiet, except for the near-silent hum of the computers, but the quiet is made up for by the lively, reactive surfaces and eclectic collections.
Tarnished copper kettles, delicate brandy glasses that fit naturally into the cup of your hand. Deep leather couches offer a view of the live music, where a saxophonist warbles smoothly and softly in the dimly lit background. Low-hanging pendulum lights cast halos along tables, and shadows as people talk under their light.
A soft, clear light illuminates the entire room, which looks out onto the irrepressible waters of the harbour. Stretch out, tilt your head back, snuggle up with a cushion or rummage through the collection of random inspirations strewn throughout the soft space.
The heady mix of knowledge and comfort is self-evident just by entering through the wide doors. Tall ladders, floating rooms of scores and eccentric furnishings accentuate the vertical nature of the vaulted space, craning your head back as the directional flow draws the eye up and through the windows at the apex.
Light falls indirectly through tall windows. Ethereal sky bridges arch over the space. Tourists, commuters, office-folk mingle amongst the shared booths and tables, the ebb and flow of the transient user base changing over the course of the day.
Guitars straddle the wall, begging for the touch of eager fingertips. The smell of new things permeates the air, inviting a little look around. The shelves and stands form a comfortable labyrinth from a musician’s dream.
Wall surfaces peel back to reveal wall pockets with steaming, freshly ground coffee, or stools lined up across the front of the hole-in-the-wall, eateries on a ‘live-fast’ / eat and run kind of mentality.
A Stolen Moment
The floor trembles with the ripple of a deep bass beat. The tremors shiver through the soles of my feet, and I reach out a hand to touch the wall, which vibrates under my hand. As the music rumbles in an crescendo of sound, yellow light within the room becomes stronger and richer, illuminating the far corners of the room. The shadows peel away to reveal a myriad of strange and peculiar objects, mixed and varied in scale and size. The music begins to soften, quietening, and the lights dim, glowing blue, and the room is wreathed in shadow once more. I stretch, arching my toes, luxuriating in the deep leather chair, but still unsatisfied with the lack of inspiration. Despite the comfort, it was time to move on.
I exit the room through a narrow door, which swings heavily outwards, forcing me to put more effort in the gesture than I would have thought. An arching, ephemeral bridge links this door to another on the far side of the vaulted free space below. The delicate structure seems less solid than should possibly be trusted, a wraith-like form arching across the vaulted, cavernous space. But I needed to walk, to think, to muse, so I pace across the bridge, wondering where the door on the other side would lead to. The floating rooms seem to cantilever unnaturally through the air, reaching out to meet the ephemeral bridge.
Glancing down, I see the people; museos, cityfolk and tourists mingling in the free space of complex - I smile as I compare the eclectic mix of furnishing and details, just like the diverse mix of people. It was everchanging, from before the soft orange of the dawn fell through the translucent sky windows, to when the twilight gathered once again, the shadows invading the lively space. The vaulted free space is noisy, but unaffected by the deep beat and strange happenings elsewhere in the complex, the sound restrained elsewhere.
Ducking through the doorway on the far side, the room within is small, with a little round window like a port-hole on the far side. Darkness envelopes the room except for that one natural light, and the light that evaporated upwards from the other side of a glazed partition that forms one of the four walls. Pressing my nose up to the glass, the cold surface radiated pleasantly against my skin. I looked down upon one of the recording studios, with a band performing silently in sound room, while a man with headphones and blue-tipped hair bopped his head to an unheard beat in the mixing studio.
Faint strands of a saxophone melody floated through the window, entrapped within the small space with me. The jazz lounge must be in full swing already, and the music made an unlikely counterpoint to the silent metal band that played below. Unconsciously I tapped out a faint rhythm against my leg, not realising I had moved until the room lightening and darkening faintly with each soft beat.
Abruptly my fingers twitched, as if searching for a guitar-string, with the answer to what with missing in the piece. Preoccupied, I turned and hurried back to my guitar, through along the divergent pathways and moving passages, smiling faintly with delight.
tool box - qualities of
LIGHT
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Purple promise of the false dawn before sunrise
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Mysterious shadows of a moonlit night
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Inviting dappled shade beneath a tree
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Chill of deeply shaded avenues
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Blinding brightness of a cloudless sky
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Gentle grey tones of overcast clouds
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The momentary brillance of sunset
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dusky orange as lamplight filters away into the dusk
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steady, clinical, white, crystallline light
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romance of candlelight, intimate illumination
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inadvertant flickers, an electronic buzz
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fireworks - fleeting excitement
13. endless variety and reactivity of LEDs (LED ‘water graffiti’) 14. projected light in many different forms
tool box - qualities of
SOUND
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volume; a delicate soft lullaby or grand orchestratural piece
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emphasis
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genre
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emotion
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associations - personal / from memory
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tactile; feel it in your bones (literally)
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cacophony; (conflict with other noise)
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tool box - some applications of
LIGHT indirect / sculputural light devices non-mechanical 3.
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Barrier - patterned or translucent; filtering
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Spatial; acoustic environment
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Atmospheric lighting devices
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Spatial; emotive environment
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Framing devices
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Sound system; quality/arrangement
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Indirect, reflected light
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Conversion systems; energy from vibrations
tool box - some applications of
SOUND 5.
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“If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove
the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the
plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.�
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes