Student Name:

Wong Queeny

Title of Project:

Primordial State

Original Building:

The Michael Fowler Centre

Site Address:

111 Wakefield Street Place

Programme:

Orchestral Performance Centre

Student Name:

Wong Queeny

Title of Project:

Primordial State

Original Building:

The Michael Fowler Centre

Site Address:

111 Wakefield Street Place

Programme:

Orchestral Performance Centre

Epigraph

“Mechanical Universe - Static, deterministic; separate, absolute space and absolute time, universal for all observers space-time frames; inert objects with simple locations in space and time; Linear, homogeneous space and time; Local causation; given, non-participatory and hence, impotent observer.

Organic Universe - Dynamic, evolving; space-time inseparable, contingent observer (process)-dependent: Delocalized organisms with mutually entangled space-times; Non-linear, heterogeneous multidimensional space times; Non-local causation; Creative, participatory entanglement of observer and observed.  “(Ho, 1997) [1]

Abstract

The transformation of the existing Michael Fowler Centre with the proposed intervention was strongly driven by the contextual dialogue of natural elements. Analysis of the existing static mechanic structure of the MFC inspired me to create a flowing organic intervention in counterpoint to the original, creating an atmosphere as if the occupants are surrounded by the sound wave of the harmonic sea. Simultaneously the intervention challenges the ecological transformation of the MFC toward a more sustainable building, incorporating self-sufficient and self-operating systems that save natural resources in the day and convert them into electricity for performances at night.

The intervention adapts Lebbeus Woods’ mythology of ‘Four Cities’, his City of Earth-Air-Fire-Water, which proposes that architecture might change people’s thinking by offering different spaces within which to encourage them to challenge the environment. In these four organic structured cities, spaces are formed from cycles in nature and primordial states of matter and energy. This is expressed as a mythology of evolution, a cosmology in which the human being finds harmony with cycles of time, environment, and the passage from birth through growth, decay and death and again to birth.