Arts Thread

Amid the rising number of dementia patients, the proposal examines the relationship between Architecture, Music, and Memory to speculate innovative ways to address the issue. Parasitising the abandoned York Road Station, the programme combines and spatialises the premises of patient-specific music playlists and sensory gardens in an architectural promenade, deploying virtual space to stimulate the senses and evoke specific memories of a fictional protagonist’s life. For its nostalgic connection to British architectural heritage, brick was chosen as the primary material – complemented by clay ornamentation, bridging tradition and innovation. The introduction of a proportional system based on musical notes and harmonies, which translated music into architecture dictated the entire scheme’s development. An interdisciplinary methodology combined hand-drawing, digital modelling, rendering, film, and musical composition. The project proposes less the building itself than a system for generating space - virtual or otherwise - and a new niche in spatial practice. At the highest order, the project calls for the profession to embrace its greatest good – its ability to bridge the disconnected.

‘An Ode to Apollo’ is a centre for research in acoustics and musical production, platforming both creative and scientific studies of sound. In defiance of the unrelenting roar of the neighbouring elevated-railway, the facility is a prototype in how we might occupy such acoustically-challenged pockets of the built environment. Contained within this architecture of attenuation, a series of inhabitable music chambers celebrate and amplify the weird and wonderful dynamics of sound and space.