Alchemy: A floating isle for performing Arts

Goswami Khyati Upendragiri

AR3038

The idea is to create an urban surrounding that is functional, formal, and accommodative and to set up a series of interventions that can house both the re-construction of Louis Catherine's barge on the dry dock and also the celebrating events for the city. It blends into the urban surrounding and does not overpower the existing historical monuments rather it coherently retrofits. And how these contemporary interventions can preserve, acknowledge and evolve in this heritage. The intervention introduced creates a modernist spatial and tectonic resolution.

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Design Process - To explore the core idea of suspending volumes through the metal frames.

Above deck level plan showing the arrangement of the intervention with the barge outside of it after it is constructed

Roof deck level plan showing the arrangement of the intervention with the barge outside of it after it is constructed.

Section cutting through the volumes that are getting built when the barge is also under construction.

Section cutting through the volumes that are halfway built when the barge is also under construction.

The barge while construction is redesigned and the middle courtyard has been converted into a smaller version of the core idea that the dry dock follows. Hence, the complete arrangement works coherently. The space inside of this shell has a music studio, to its left, there is a dance studio and to the right, the third courtyard houses a theatre studio. The barge also houses flexibility in the possibilities of programs that could happen inside of it.

Longitudinal section shows the flexibility of the entire arrangement with the possibilities of the event inside of it.

The moment when the barge leaves the dry dock and the dock is sunk in the sea, the arrangement expresses a very strong coherent connection withing the barge the dry dock, and the pontoon housing the kitchen and services.

The structure of the shell is made out of wooden ribs forming nest like structure which holds the shell made out of venier strips put together with epoxy. The horns jutting out of the shell are also made out in similar way. The ‘T’ shaped metal plate columns are elevated and further are braced with horizontal metal plates and then are bolted.

Transpose: The change in perception when one is in the sea and looking towards the land.The shift in experiencing the moment of being in the sea and feeling of being constant motion.