Tuning Architecture
Investigating Acoustic Parallels between Climate and Space.
Grace Chen | The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
This project explores Iceland’s cultural condition through the spatialization of climatic and seasonal phenomena for the purpose of music experimentation in Reykjavik. A city with a burgeoning music scene, its lack of tectonic connections to its global identity of ‘natural, spacious sounds’ reveals an experiential disparity between culture and architecture. A critique against the hermetic condition of many contemporary buildings, the project seeks to engage with the environment in a dynamic and reciprocal way, coupling the notion of Icelandic sounds with its architectonic manifestation.
An aural playground comprised of a series of outdoor recording pavilions, the proposition is activated by specific weather conditions. Through its positioning on site, the pavilions engage with notions of time and rituals. A play between active vs. passive states, summer vs. winter, the project reinterprets existing architectural frameworks towards a site-specific response to the eclectic music scene and cultural identity of Iceland.
An aural playground comprised of a series of outdoor recording pavilions, the proposition is activated by specific weather conditions. Through its positioning on site, the pavilions engage with notions of time and rituals. A play between active vs. passive states, summer vs. winter, the project reinterprets existing architectural frameworks towards a site-specific response to the eclectic music scene and cultural identity of Iceland.
Figurative Plan
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Section
The changing nature of the wall is indicated. |
Obsolete Object
The ruin is a self-referential object. It is majestic but stagnant. A moment of realization, a melancholy moment where the object is stripped of its meaning, cultural significance, charm, gravity and sacredness.
What is left is the object as a reminder of a particular reality, the lingering desire for which is in itself a memory.
The ruin is a self-referential object. It is majestic but stagnant. A moment of realization, a melancholy moment where the object is stripped of its meaning, cultural significance, charm, gravity and sacredness.
What is left is the object as a reminder of a particular reality, the lingering desire for which is in itself a memory.
Utopia
An archipelago of monuments, a plethora of landmarks creating a decedent architectural wasteland. It is infinite and unattainable like air. Is the object really obsolete? Does its reconfiguration and reimagination as a "place" give it a new role within the context of memory making? |
Tapu - Sacred or Untouchable
The object is obsolete. The monument is in the earth and how it heals, in the fire as it purifies, in the resonating chants of the elders revering the elements and making sacred spaces. The monument is in the place - the place that acknowledges the past, accommodates the present and anticipates the future in the same breath. It is a liminal space, a moment of contemplation and rediscovery, a void. |
Encounter
A moment of anticipation and mystery where moment is prescribed. The illusion of depth is captivating. The water is unstable and volatile but the promise of a destination beyond the narrow aperture in the wall is grounding. What is the wall? It is the earth, shaped and reshaped. It is a material manifestation of past, present and future memories. It is the solid that defines a void; a threshold between two worlds, one of imagination and one of reimagination. 
Metamorphosis
The wall dematerializes into a translucent crystalline fluid, which holds captive discernible objects. Crafted objects, symbols and objects of the earth that are familiar and reorienting. Multiple histories resurface through the stories that are latent within the objects. Their adjacencies bring into being new realities. This is a potent space, a potential conclusion. But did the earthen wall dematerialize or is this how it starts coagulating? Where did it begin and where will it end? Did it begin at all? |
Evanescence
Change is inevitable. The permanence of the wall, its solidity gradually gives way to lightness. What is solid? That which is palpable but dematerializes, decays and becomes obsolete or the phenomenon of the omnipresent sky, which is intangible. What is void? The absence of a presence or the presence of an absence. It is the apparent presence of an absence, the absence of an ultimate conclusion or destination. Movement is perpetual. |
Spirituality
A place is made to foster moments in which thresholds collapse, boundaries dissolve and elements lose their particular attributes. A confined water body reflects the sky while the ground lies above and below. This is a space of emersion and spiritual contemplation. A space that makes light tangible and sound palpable. Objects no longer exist, the wall is no longer a defining entity and the distinction between reality and fiction cannot be made.
A place is made to foster moments in which thresholds collapse, boundaries dissolve and elements lose their particular attributes. A confined water body reflects the sky while the ground lies above and below. This is a space of emersion and spiritual contemplation. A space that makes light tangible and sound palpable. Objects no longer exist, the wall is no longer a defining entity and the distinction between reality and fiction cannot be made.
Place as Monument
A container and generator of memories. A positive and dynamic space of pure potential that provides glimpses into the past and alternative versions of the past, which resemble potential futures.
A container and generator of memories. A positive and dynamic space of pure potential that provides glimpses into the past and alternative versions of the past, which resemble potential futures.
Grace Chen
Originally from New Zealand, Grace is an architecture graduate from the University of Sydney (Bachelor’s) and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (Master’s). Grace currently works as an architect in Copenhagen, Denmark.