A music school and concert hall for the students. 55 St Andrews Place’s facade will encapsulate a public music school, with a performance hall built on the perimeter of an ambient public square in Melbourne’s Treasury Precinct.

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After a troubled period for musicians, an offering to the public in the form of a music school accompanied by a concert hall for performances should work to re-establish, maintain, and evolve the art form in the zeitgeist. Those that wish to engage in music deserve attribution, and a public building that places musicians and the public on equal footing prevents the exploitative act of separation of artist from art.

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Therefore, in combination with music, a visual connection between student and art, art and public, and the student within the public is facilitated by the performance hall’s translucency in programme and circulation through the affordance of vantage. Can audience members shift the position of their seats? Must they be always seated? Music is defined by subjectivity - it cannot be consumed as designed. The public must choose their angle.

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Step away from the capsule of performance, and experience narrow glimpses of action while travelling through the building - an ever-presence. Like music, the shifting shadows, warped fiberglass cladding and contoured fabrics are ephemeral, with no moment replicable. The counterpoint is the static existence; the permanence of the concert hall itself, suspended within this experiential shell.

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The immediate view of the building from the stark, ambient square beckons - the concert hall offers itself as a public edifice through media projection: a pragmatic offset, but culturally a perioic, event-driven gesture. The building is hoisted up above the ground, allowing informal performances to spill out of the building. Here, students and public are one and the offering to said public becomes the product of the student’s learning.

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Performances here are strictly for students. The inflated public presence of large bands, solo artists and others represents the total severance of art from its artist. While both may coexist, they need not. You are your music.

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