A synopsis of sorts
“As the vitality of towns dwindle in the midst of a digital and pandemic age, our notions of gathering are with it, transitioning into the non-tangible, pulled by ‘zoom’ classes and online shopping, and drifting further from being grounded in physical space. Our needs to spend time in nature, for its positive effects on health and wellbeing, is followed closely by our innate human desires to gather in the built environment, posing the question: what type of civic town structures still hold relevancy in this age, and what traditions and cultures of gathering should be preserved, abandoned or progressed?
In the context of a Scottish town, like our site of Dalkeith, typical town issues such as a diminishing requirement for retail, poor investment in town centres, and an ageing demographic, present both economic and societal parameters in which this question must be carefully and urgently addressed. The High Street must be revitalised through a new centre of gathering, while a connection to the land must be reignited.
Through careful consideration from site visits, this project fashions two architectures around the facilitation of sound; namely natural ambient sound in the land and the experience of music in the town, which form the drivers for a typological and tectonic agenda. The overall proposal sites a key walk from the edge of the High Street, across Dalkeith Country Park and into the woodlands as being the primary route which links both the town and land environments. Through recording, drawing, iterating and synthesising, the intent of the project is to create two nodes of gathering along this walk: A sound pavilion or 'An Ear to Ambience' in the woodland, and a cultural centre for music or 'The Instruments of Assembly' on the High Street."