Blue Frog | Serie Architects
Acoustic Lounge Juhu / India / 2007
86
The strategies of hybridisation of the 90s, more often than not, resulted in the smooth blending of one tectonic surface with another. Accompanying this tendency is the belief that the formal procedure of blending will naturally result in the cross-breeding of programme. Blue Frog for us is a project that revisits the problem of multi-programmed spaces without resorting to formal redundancy as a representation of programmatic complexity. The project brief called for the conversion of a large north-lit industrial warehouse within the old mill district in Mumbai into a complex of sound recording studios and an acoustic lounge. This lounge will consist of a restaurant, bar and a live stage. Beyond this amalgamation of provisions, Blue Frog seeks to stage an acoustic experience par excellence. Based on this desire of the project brief to have it all, the question for us is: how do you collapse a theatre, restaurant, bar and club into a warehouse, whilst maintaining all the performative characteristics of each individual type? The deep structure that has been employed is of a cellular organisation composed of circles of varying sizes approximating a horse-shoe configuration in plan. The differential extrusions of these circles, encapsulated at different levels as tiered cylindrical seating booths, allow the eye level of diners and standing patrons to be distributed across staggered levels that increase in height away from the stage. These booths seat between 4-10 people and are arranged around an open centre that can either double up as a potential 360° stage or accommodate standing patrons, bringing them closer to the main stage to create an intimate viewing experience. These mahogany panelled cylindrical booths not only maintain uninterrupted views to the stage, but also a constant distance between diners, irrespective of how crowded the lounge gets. The undulating height of the seating booths is gently modulated by a glowing acrylic resin surface, which unifies the disparate types and retains the presence of the architecture even in the midst of the spectacle of a sound and light show. It can be argued that the programmatic multiplicities here arise out of the disposition of the irreducible typal imprints harnessed from the above mentioned precedent types. And it is these deep structures that give rise to the multiple programmatic configurations without the project resorting to any strategies of formal convolution.
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The strategies of hybridisation of the 90s, more often than not, resulted in the smooth blending of one tectonic surface with another. Accompanying this tendency is the belief that the formal procedure of blending will naturally result in the cross-breeding of programme. Blue Frog for us is a project that revisits the problem of multi-programmed spaces without resorting to formal redundancy as a representation of programmatic complexity. The project brief called for the conversion of a large...
- Year 2007
- Work finished in 2007
- Client Blue Frog Media Pvt. Ltd.
- Cost 640.000
- Status Completed works
- Type Bars/Cafés / Restaurants / Discos, Clubs
- Websitehttp://www.serie.co.uk
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