Experiential Music Museum
Type
Experiential Museum for Music
City
Bangalore
Built Up Area
32,519 Sq.Ft
Site

Indian Music Experience offers to increase the level of cultural engagement in the community by bringing music closer to people.It serves as a contemporary urban space for students,tourists,who come to experience,looking for entertaining yet enriching experiences.The context brings together the idea of Indian music,a museum,a music school,documentation center and a cultural center located in a cohesive development.

Indian music inspires through its classical structure, variety of instruments,diversity of folk cultures and the medley of popular music.A setting for understanding it should be inspired from the intensity of Indian music.The design begins from understanding classical structure of music,and develops it along the lines of how raga is constructed,and improvises it towards an experience that reminds one of musical ideas of depth,pitch,volume,texture and scale.

A grid brings the site under control.Each grid offers a way to understand the site and influences the relationship between design and the site.The selection of which grids to use begins setting up the relationship of the architecture and the site.The octaves present a clear way of structuring music with the seven notes spread over 12 semitones and forms the basis of classical Indian music.These seven notes provides the framework for music.The musician decides which notes to select and in what order to construct the raga.Similarly,the architect selects different notes[by representing them as points on the grid inscribed onto the site]and connects some of them to define the kind of spaces required.

The entrance to the center is through musical plaza that has a sculptural landscape leading to a musical experience.It climbs downwards to a temporary exhibit space that acts as a semi-formal performance space as well.Keeping a minimal footprint,the building works over multiple levels that are interconnected by ramps,steps and a linear void.Galleries are kept in the first and the second level,the music school in the upper most level away from the museum.The ground level serves as a lobby and entry with the temporary gallery in the lower level.The lobby level  has the gallery,music store,cafe,music school and movie hall along with an administrative area.The gallery level leading from the lobby level is a gentle ramped neutral space which takes the visitor up to the gallery level.The changing levels,volumes and character provide specific setting for static,changing and transitory experiences in the gallery.

The articulation of materials,form and voids is directed towards a memorable form outside and an embodied experience of the inside of the museum that is rich in providing a setting for interaction,learning,teaching,researching and musical engagement.Here,the musical ideas of rhythm,repetition,depths,volume and pitch appear in form,structure,light and shadow and in surface articulation of the architecture keeping music as a reference and a balance between heavy and light materials,space and texture.