Seth McDowell Architect, pllc

 

Lanzarote is a long and volcanic, paradisiac Spanish island near the African coasts with crystalline waters and volcanic earth. “The dry environment and its habitual lack of rains, forces inhabitants of Lanzarote to make the water tank a fundamental piece of the domestic economy and home construction. We pick up the last drop of water, when it finally falls, and hold it as the most precious treasure” (César Manrique) The mystical atmosphere and landscape of Lanzarote has drawn artists from different disciplines for hundreds of years to seek stronger connections with the environment in their creative work. 

 

Aware of the need to support artists and to make Lanzarote more accessible to those who want it, the Cabildo of Lanzarote launched a design competition to transform an old Water tank and its surroundings, into a place of rehearsal, performance and a meeting point for artists. It is in a neighborhood at the edge of the city, in which cultural and public spaces are scarce. The hope is for the old water reservoir to sprinkle music all over its environment creating a habitat that stimulates an urban ecosystem based on a sustainable, orderly, diverse development.

 

Our concept for The Lanzarote Music Factory intervention is to levitate new spaces for music above the existing industrial artifact.  This involves constructing a new, structural roof from which to suspend new spaces dedicated to recording, rehearsing and performing.  This strategy can be described by these four operations: 

 

01_Span and Levitate

The existing roof is removed and replaced with a timber truss system.  This timber truss structure allows for a completely open span and will be oversized to support all new spaces.  The new spaces for the Music Factory will be suspended from the trusses, allowing the rehearsal and recording studios to levitate above a flexible performance space occurring on the existing slab. 

 

02_Portals to the sky

Replacing the existing roof allows for the strategy of opening to the sky for natural light.  The suspended studios will have a portal in the top and this portal will kiss skylights in the roof that allow for light to infiltrate the studios.  The depth of the new truss system will allow for clerestories to bring natural light into the performance spaces. 

 

03_Floating datums

The existing space will be refinished and painted blue up to the top of the existing masonry retaining walls. The spatial concept is to float. The levitating studios will work to “float” on a blue spatial datum as if the existing building was filled with water.  The rehearsal studios will then float above this blue space and connect to the third datum which is the new roof.  The suspended studios become portals to the sky.     

 

04_Inhabititing the water tank

This project involves adapting a hydrological infrastructure for creative endeavors.  This logic is continued at the scale of the room and material. The module for this intervention is the water tank.  Water tanks, especially when constructed from wood, are beautiful objects and have amazing acoustics when empty.  The strategy is to collect a series of old, circular water tanks and rework them to make them the suspended rehearsal / recording studios and offices.  

 

The design adapts an existing industrial artifact by layering a new spatial system on top.  This allows the ground floor, currently a slab on grade, to become an extremely flexible space dedicated to performance.  The project addresses reuse in a provocative way. It reuses the existing building, and it reuses the form and materiality of water tanks.  The space hints at something familiar but moves into something unknown.