Mozart in the Jungle
I recently started a television show on HBO called ‘Mozart in the Jungle.’ This show depicts musicians in the New York City Symphony Orchestra working to adjust to a new Spanish conductor (very similar personality to David Franco :)). In one episode the new Spanish conductor has the orchestra, which is predominantly comprised of older white musicians, meet him at a random address in Brooklyn during one of their scheduled rehearsals. Upon arrival, the musicians see a vacant city lot sandwiched between two apartment buildings and gated off by a tall chain fence. Through the fence they notice that the new conductor has already set up seats and stands for the rehearsal and managed to create a large enough tear in the fence to allow individuals to climb through.
The musicians initially question his motives in outrage, but quickly realize the beauty of the exercise once neighboring residents start to come out and set up small seating areas around the rehearsing orchestra. I instantly thought of this course and the idea of adaptive reuse and the act of existing economies + infrastructures. While it is so easy for architects to overlook the benal existing, I believe that there is valuable information in their previous construction and long lived existence. Even if a structure had dissolved and only the shell remains, that shell represents history of a sense of place that is worth consideration. Placing value on the existing has the ability to communicate to people on a 1:1 level, tapping into their heritage and deepest sense of tradition and routine. I believe this strengthening of community to be a beautiful part of life and the potential role of an architect.
This post definitely made the former band kid in me happy. I've always had an appreciation for the groups of musicians that catch the public off guard, turning a hotel lobby into a theater. Integrating this idea with adaptive reuse is really rich and an idea worth pursuing.
ReplyDeleteI think in a similar vein to this are street musicians and busking. They are such vital parts to what we experience in a city's soundscape. We've all seen videos of musicians blowing people away with performances on the subway or street corners. What is really amazing in those videos is not the performance, but the fact that such an assortment of people comes together in those instances. There is no division of race, class, ideology, just a group of city inhabitants being impacted emotionally by a performance.
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