Aldeburgh Pavilion
Client: Aldeburgh Music
Location: Snape Maltings
Cost: Unknown
Status: Unbuilt
Category: Public, Competition
A design developed as a competition entry for Aldeburgh Music’s Children’s Viewing Sculpture, to be positioned at their Snape Maltings facility and then tour the surrounding area.
Conceived as part Camera Obscura, part inhabitable instrument, the pavilion is accessible to all. The design draws influences from the landscape and history of Aldeburgh, and the folklore and mythology of the British Isles as a whole, to reflect it’s touring nature.
Fully demountable, the pavilion consists of a shell of black-out canvas stretched over a tubular frame. Externally, bleached timber sound boxes are hung off the frame. Within each box is a reed of sprung steel that twitches in the wind. A steel ball on each frond strikes the sides of the box like a temple block. The number of occupants within the pavilion will affect the acoustics, guaranteeing that no ‘performance’ will ever be replicable.
The periscope head is set on a frictionless circular rail, it’s mane acting as a wind vane. The view, projected below onto the white concrete bowl, is determined by the prevailing wind.