Music as mentor

Compiled by TeamIAnD

Photography: Ernests Sveisbergs; courtesy DJA

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Latvia’s Architecture Award for 2015 has been bagged by Nature Concert Hall - a multimedia nature-educational event that incorporates science, dramaturgy, music and art…

Shakespeare’s complex metaphor, “If music be the food of love; play on…” would probably have sought exactly the kind of ambience that Nature Concert Hall seeks – year-after-year. Since 2006, the committed organization seeks to connect people to selected natural habitats by organizing a musical concert, which brings them closer to understanding and caring for the location.

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It also manifests that musicians need to break out of their traditional concert venues and mingle with the hoi-polloi in an enviable experience that includes the natural surroundings as one of its players – through lights, sounds and the public's own understanding and appreciations.

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Architecture office DJA’s (Didzis Jaunzems Architecture) design for the creative workshops and pavilion of Nature Concert Hall held in June 2015, which chose the Gauja National park, near Sigulda, Latvia as its venue; and the emergence and structure of natural meadows as its main subject has been applauded for its structural and cultural leanings.

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The 150 sq. m pavilion was designed as an art object that unifies all the significant atmospheric components of the event - space, light, video and music. The highlight was that its architectural volumes referenced existing elements in nature and it was designed to touch down on the protected biotope meadow only at certain touch points on the ground.

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While its roof sheltered an academic symphonic chamber orchestra of 20 people and the Nature Concert Hall music band, the intriguingly designed elevations were made from vertical fabric bars that could be rotated at will and thus effect variants of transparency and closeness; besides serving as a screen for video and light projections.

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Following a modular principle, the scientific workshops were designed to convenience combinations based on desired sizes, configurations and locations on the site.