B. The prelude series pavilions
Again, Chopin’s piano pieces were precursors, specifically the 24 preludes from opus 28. The pieces are stand-alone works that do not precede a subsequent piece. Only four models comprise this series and in this case each model was made in response to a title selected from a list I devised to serve as goads or, at best, as architectural design briefs. I had no idea what any of the things titled were – I generated them as word play to offer me difficulty prior to, and during, designing/making.
7 Song Station
Singers stand upon the platforms, their augmented voices projected to the imaginary amphitheatre sited before them are guided by the screens and the shell above. A station is an assigned place, a stopping place on a journey, a position for machinery in a making process. Is this a station for touring descendants of the fifteenth and sixteenth century Meistersingers celebrated by Wagner’s opera?
Song and architecture have the concept of repetition and thus pattern as ordering devices in common. In this pavilion there is an A-B-A-B-A pattern to both the screens and the rear speaker elements behind the performance spaces. One of the ‘B’ spaces between the screens is centred on an existing, old and worn chimney structure; the other is punctuated by an enigmatic box. The rear units, although conforming to the same A-B-A-B-A pattern, reverse the lengths of each element compared to the spacing of the screens, otherwise they share the same centres. Each ‘A’ element is also subdivided into an A-B-A-B-A pattern – in this case of equal widths. The same spacing pattern occurs in the arrangement of the red platforms if the vertical rods are taken as the ‘B’ elements. In contrast, there is an absence of ordering devices backstage. Pragmatic necessity rules.
Found, gifted, inherited and sought parts and materials drove the making of this pavilion including the cedar base made from sections of the Melbourne Town Hall organ frame when it was restored (organised for me by Alex Selenitsch); a piece of unknown furniture wood from a street skip reshaped and polished; wires, metal rods and spacers, a short plastic pipe, a stray length of weary copper pipe and plastic fittings from my late father’s workshop; and the spent inkjet printer cartridges that were the original inspiration. Various bits and pieces from an electronics shop that have been mildly modified are the sought items. Other materials – timber pieces, metal meshes, styrene plastic flats and H-sections, metal channels and rods, and assorted other materials were bought or were already amongst my supplies. (See section on ‘making materials’.)
Base: 239mm x 237mm. Model: 252mm x 237mm. Height: 212 mm.
Initiated: November 2001. Constructed: January 2002 – December 2002.