I thought I'd start a poll in our development and construction thread as this is a fits probably better in this section:
Please vote for your favourite, but you could also rank and provide your critique of the designs:
==================================
1. Allied Works with BKDI
Link to Video and Description:
http://cantos.ca/kingeddy/meet-the-a...i-the-concept/
Buildings, as distinct from all other arts, carry a particular silent power that is rendered more potent in a time when all media, all information, and all voices attempt to speak at higher and higher decibels. Rather than seek novelty in form, architecture must create inspired experience. When we build we provide measure and reference for society, but more, buildings amplify our perceptions, understanding and aspirations. The more specific and focused the act of building, the more significant its impact upon individuals and the more profound its participation within our cities. It is this essence, revealed in the architecture, which will resonate within a culture and endure through time.
The National Music Centre is an extraordinary instrument, silent and powerful, brought to life by its programs, collections and performances. The new building forms rise as sentinels around the re-born King Eddy, marking the entry to the East Village and new Music District. The towers are beautifully crafted cases that hold the specific potential of a rich musical experience. The building, a gathering of resonant vessels, exists to be ‘played’ – to emanate music, light and activity.
The new design draws from the iconic landscapes of Canada: evoking the canyons and mountains of the west, the silence of the prairies and the energy and diversity of urban space. These forces and influences are concentrated into the National Music Centre, creating a spirit of architecture that inspires and renews.
Inside, new experiences that synthesize architecture, music and interactive media unfold. More than an empty vessel for the programs and collections, the building is the bridge between audience and performer, student and teacher, the body and the collection. It invites inquiry and experimentation, and is a point of contact between hands, minds, materials and ideas. Like a well-crafted instrument, the architecture is capable of a wide range of expression, and holds the potential to create profound, personal and moving experience.
=====================================
SPF Architects
Link to video and descrption:
http://cantos.ca/kingeddy/meet-the-a...a-the-concept/
Take me to the Bridge: The Cantos’ Foundation National Music Centre is a bridge from the East to the West and a gateway to the East Village.
Music on Every Level: The collection, the performance spaces and Classrooms are integrated throughout the building to create opportunities for engagement between otherwise isolated communities.
Eddy: The King Eddy is a place where generations of Calgarians have enjoyed music and each other’s company; it represents a link to the past of Calgary and to the sonic routes of the community.
We honor that past by incorporating it into a new architectural scenario. We’ve kept the Eddy grounded despite the road literally being pulled out from under him and we have added a new layer that preserves the past and allows it to continue to accrue additional layers of history and meaning.
The Soundscape: The soundscape is the heart of this project. A hollow chamber within the buildings mass, vibrations of air and light move through the space reflecting off of its walls warming it’s surfaces describing it’s volume and shape.
The soundscape does not just aurally and visually connect spaces, it is the space where a new and larger community is formed around sound.
An incubator for new music and a repository of Canadian musical culture, this project establishes a space for community within the building and a place for Cantos in the city, while restoring a unique piece of Calgary’s musical heritage to its throne.
Galleries-Laboratory meets living room: The Cantos collection is poised to expand and transform, a variety of flexible spaces finely tuned to its needs awaits. These spaces will develop organically just as the existing collection has writing a new story about the relationship of musical instruments to the architecture and culture that surrounds them.
Black is the New Green: The building insulates and shelters the collection soaking in the sun, calibrating and controlling its light while repurposing its energy to feed the institution.
A Day in the Life: You arrive about midday after lunch, perhaps, and start in the lobby, move up to the mezzanine and view the Rolling stones mobile recording studio, possibly hit the orientation gallery, enter into the soundscape and move up to performance 1- possibly to see a small classical ensemble. After that, continue up the soundscape to one of the galleries and end up potentially at the research area and archives. Once you have had your fill, you could spend a little more time perusing the deconstructed cowboy on level 3 and finally end up in the performance gallery at the very top and catch an avant garde jazz act. But, what you really came for was some heart thumping blues- and you are only about a 30 second elevator ride away that would land you within feet of the King Eddy Club stage and its bar. By now, you are certainly ready for a beer and the first riffs of John Lee Hooker’s “Hobo Blues”.
====================================
Ateliers Jean Nouvel Workshop
Link to video and description:
http://cantos.ca/kingeddy/meet-the-a...uvel-workshop/
The National Music Centre of Canada will be visible. It will keep the brick envelope of the existing King Eddy hotel entirely and will rise in a light and slender tower volume above it. The Tower will appear as an open piano or music box, revealing the brass and wooden inside of a complicated instrument through its cantilevered open lids on the East façade and roof.
The design relies on the opacity of its South and East façades to dramatize these openings and the vertiginous vertical views into and out of the building. The narrow vertical space of the façade gap ties the interior of the building visually together and visitors will never have to wonder where they are on each floor as they descend through the collection spaces.
While the East façade can serve as a giant screen for night time projections, the perforated skin of the West Façade is a fragile, diaphanous full height image that shines like a warm coloured magic lantern at night.
At the street level, the sidewalks slope down by as much as 4’ to follow the grading of the 4th Street underpass creating a stunning detail at the base of the King Eddy. Under the existing façade, a glazed gap opens gradually, offering insights into the Club and a new, 4’ lower entrance below the existing one.
This entrance scenario sends the message that the King Eddy continues to be a low place, close to the street and easily accessible for everyone.
The Club occupies the full three floor height of the old King Eddy Hotel with a main floor and two mezzanine levels. Playing a half-empty house in such a place puts less pressure on the musicians because the void seats of the upper floors can disappear into the dark and the room feels smaller. When the mezzanines do fill up with walls of people, the place keeps a compact and intimate feel despite its size. Spectators on the lower mezzanine can drink, eat and watch a show from a continuous counter around the central void.
During the day, sunlight pours through 52 windows in the existing brick façade and makes the Club a comfortable place to be for breakfast or lunch. At night it becomes a dark and glamorous space with a range of finishes from black iron to white leather and raw bricks to polished stone.
The Collection visitors will enter through a separate large opening in the brick wall of the existing East façade that can be closed like a secret door at night. Elevators will take them to the top floor of the museum from where they can descend in a continuous promenade through seven museum floors, discovering sudden vistas of downtown Calgary, the Bow River and the Rockies on their way.
The vertical stacking of exhibition floors gives maximum flexibility to close and rebuild individual levels without disrupting the overall visit of the place.
At the top of the tower lies a performance space that offers views downwards reflected in the mirror underside of a large cantilevered roof lid.
A large sky light shows a stunning view of the streets below, reflected in the mirrored underside of the tilted roof lid above. When this space is rented out for weddings or events, large sliding panels can be moved away to uncover breathtaking views of the city.
From the street level to the top floor, the Open Piano Tower will be a place for music in its most tolerant understanding. It could become a place for the city and perhaps the world to come together in harmony.
=====================================
Saucier and Perrotte with GEC Architects
Link to video and description:
http://cantos.ca/kingeddy/meet-the-a...c-the-concept/
The idea of conceptually multiplying the form of the King Eddy was the initial starting point for the design. Spaces evoking its shape are replicated and displaced throughout the new project in order to reference its history. The building path then becomes a unique three dimensional topography that links these replicated objects/spaces, so that the visitor experience is akin to a journey through a new landscape with the historic presence of the King Eddy felt throughout. The movement of people and their experiences of the diverse collections of the Cantos Foundation is what animates this journey through music and sound. The building envelope acts as a skin of clear and smoked glass that ties all the parts together, as it reacts to the activity within and reflects the surrounding urban context. The design of the facades skin manifests in three dimensional terms of the sounds represented by the music we hear. Doing this is instructive to visitors in visualizing the way sound works, and is also a signature treatment for the façade unlike that of any other building.
In addition to its striking formal expression, some of the principal elements that characterize the project include 1) the ground level lobby, which is not limited to the indoors, but which expands outward into the street and city, bringing the history of the King Eddy into the new building; 2) the substantial urban event opportunities generated by the design and program of the new project; and 3) the innovative reverberation space that will undoubtedly become a signature feature of a project positioned to be a major landmark in Canada. And just as the National Music Centre serves to bring new life both socially and economically to East Village around the clock, it will set an example in environmentally conscious design.
=======================================
Diller Scofidio + Renfro architects with Kasian
Link to video and description:
http://cantos.ca/kingeddy/meet-the-a...n-the-concept/
The National Music Center is an un-museum, a hybrid that merges cultural, educational and social space. The proposal bridges the King Eddy site and Site B across 4th St, producing a gateway to the East Village and anchoring the music master plan. The main building is conceived as the bountiful, younger partner of the Eddy. It leans toward the Eddy as if by magnetic attraction; its corner is undercut in solidarity with the Eddy’s chamfered corner entry. The public enters the main building from the east and south.
The Mixing Room is the nerve center of the complex. It is a grand vertical space that slices across the main building partitioning the program in two; the large presentation spaces are to the north and the smaller, interactive learning spaces to the south. This atrium-like space is lined with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall super-vitrines that store and display the “living collection.”
The largest artifact in the collection is the King Eddy. The architectural language of the Living Collection is extended across 4th St. the Eddy’s outer skin is preserved and rebuilt on site, making sure to prevent ghosts and memories from escaping. A new music room is tipped into the shell; its floor is stepped for cabaret style seating for 200 diners. Wrap-around galleries adjoining the bar informally hold another100 patrons. Entry is from the east under the tipped volume, featuring surviving photos of the Eddy’s past. An open-air void between the original south wall of the Eddy and its new liner provides a space for the street public to casually watch and hear performances from “backstage” through the glass rear wall. The tipped roof of the new Eddy makes an ideal surface to watch fireworks during the Stampede.
At night, the National Music Center will be a glowing beacon swirling with activity.
=================================