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Nouvel's Torre Agbar | |
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Faculty of Music | |
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Assembly by Rogers | |
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Faculty of Music Musical Structure The eight-story, 127,000-square-foot (12,000-square-meter) building accommodates a library, a recital hall, state-of-the-art multimedia and practice studios, and faculty offices. The new structure is an addition to the historic Strathcona Building, which houses the faculty's main concert facilities. The buildings are linked by a glazed bridge. From the exterior, the new building appears to be well integrated into its urban environment. It is situated prominently on the southeast corner of the McGill University campus, on axis with the street grid, in downtown Montréal. The front elevation stands as a focal point for observers approaching from the south. The architects succeeded in fitting the complex building program into a difficult site: a narrow strip of land bounded by two streets on the south and east and by the existing landmark building on the west. A horizontal band of concrete that folds around the southeast corner was intended by architect Gilles Saucier to represent "a raised ground level," supporting the main body above. This architectural element evokes, by its material, the stone of the older, surrounding buildings and the distant Mount Royal. Most materials used below that level, except on the south elevation, are "underground geological materials" like stone and metal. Above that level are lighter materials like glass, aluminum, and zinc. A multimedia studio anchors the design. It's the heart of the project, a polished limestone volume almost five stories high, embedded three stories into the ground at the north end. Practice rooms and technical studios also inhabit this underground realm, to the south. The recital hall and main entrance are situated at street level above these rooms. A three-story-high library sits immediately above the recital hall linked in the middle by a separate sculptural staircase and with an interior void on the south elevation linking the three levels. Wood wall finishes create a warm ambiance for the reading lounge. The top three stories of the building accommodate offices and more practice spaces. Architecture as Frozen Music The beauty of both architecture and music is expressed, in part, through rhythm and harmony. In this building, it is also seen in its sense of proportion. The east and west facades are patterned to evoke musical figures. The east elevation is clad in black and grey zinc, with long strip windows that light the office corridors and the large glazed opening into the library entry space. The west facade shows a pattern of matte and polished aluminum creating a mirror effect that reflects the Strathcona Building. A series of punched windows, evoking the music rolls used in antique player pianos, brings light into the smaller spaces inside. There has long been a close relationship between music and architecture in terms of structure, pattern, and aesthetics, even though sound ultimately describes immaterial space. We associate Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, with baroque churches and Richard Wagner with the fairy-tale Neuschwanstein castle built by Wagner's indulgent patron, Ludwig II. The avant-garde music of John Cage fits well with the minimalism of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The Jewish Museum in Berlin, by Daniel Libeskind, with its voids and zigzags, could be Arnold Schoenberg's daunting and apocalyptic Moses und Aron set to architecture. Xenakis, the composer quoted above, worked as an architect for Le Corbusier between 1947 and 1960. He produced what he called "polytopes," spaces where color, light, sound, and structure worked together in new ways to generate sensual and spiritual uplift. The chapel at Ronchamp and the church and chapel of the Convent of La Tourette, where Xenakis's mark is clear, are, I believe, some of the most mystical spaces shaped in recent times. McGill's new Faculty of Music building belongs in this tradition of clarifying — through structure and rhythm — a relationship between the two arts of music and architecture. You can feel the rhythm of the spatial sequence all along the path from the main entrance hall to the upper levels. A soaring height dominates your first impression in the entry, then you discover two monumental stairs, one on each side, linked together by a crossing skywalk. Walking up the first stair and turning onto the footbridge, you feel the void below, before being enclosed again by the sides of another long staircase. All along this lane, a contrasting sequence of alternating light and darkness, heightened by the use of color, emphasizes the effect of cadence leading to harmony. The two art forms are experienced by humans in both space and time, yet one is ethereal and the other fixed in time and space. In this building, we see architecture as practical and functional while at the same expressing visionary, musical themes. >>> Discuss this article in the Architecture Forum... Victor A. Khoueiry is an architect and journalist living in Montréal, Québec.
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