The National Music Centre of Canada will be visible.
It will keep the brick envelope of the existing King Eddy hotel entirely and will rise in a light and slender tower volume above it.
The Tower will appear as an open piano or music box, revealing the brass and wooden inside of a complicated instrument through its cantilevered open lids on the East façade and roof.
The design relies on the opacity of its South and East façades to dramatize these openings and the vertiginous vertical views into and out of the building.
The narrow vertical space of the façade gap ties the interior of the building visually together and visitors will never have to wonder where they are on each floor as they descend through the collection spaces.
While the East façade can serve as a giant screen for night time projections, the perforated skin of the West Façade is a fragile, diaphanous full height image that shines like a warm coloured magic lantern at night.
For these projections and perforated images to work best, white is the colour of choice for this Tower.
At the street level, the sidewalks slope down by as much as 4' to follow the grading of the 4th Street underpass.
This creates a stunning detail at the base of the King Eddy.
Under the existing façade, a glazed gap opens gradually, offering insights into the Club and a new, 4' lower entrance below the existing one.
This entrance scenario sends the message that the King Eddy continues to be a low place, close to the street and easily accessible for everyone.
The Club occupies the full three floor height of the old King Eddy Hotel with a main floor and two mezzanine levels.
Playing a half-empty house in such a place puts less pressure on the musicians because the void seats of the upper floors can disappear into the dark and the room feels smaller.
When the mezzanines do fill up with walls of people, the place keeps a compact and intimate feel despite its size.
Spectators on the lower mezzanine can drink, eat and watch a show from a continuous counter around the central void.
Above, the walls of the old hotel divide the second mezzanine into individual lounges, plush and intimate rooms with a mirrored view of the stage.
The main floor holds a freestanding bar, the stage and a landscape of chairs, seats, benches and tables that can be removed from the centre when a dance floor is needed.
During the day, sunlight pours through 52 windows in the existing brick façade and makes the Club a comfortable place to be for breakfast or lunch.
At night it becomes a dark and glamorous space with a range of finishes from black iron to white leather and raw bricks to polished stone.
The Collection visitors will enter through a separate large opening in the brick wall of the existing East façade that can be closed like a secret door at night.
Elevators will take them to the top floor of the museum from where they can descend in a continuous promenade through seven museum floors, discovering sudden vistas of downtown Calgary, the Bow River and the Rockies on their way.
The vertical stacking of exhibition floors gives maximum flexibility to close and rebuild individual levels without disrupting the overall visit of the place.
Fire compartment limitations and changes in the exhibition design from one section to the next occur naturally and don't have to be negotiated painstakingly within the design.
The open façade lid, the continuous West façade image and the design of the structural elements recall details of musical instruments and bind the sequence of spaces together into one mental image.
The building and the collection together embark their visitors on a voyage into the insides of sound and music.
At the top of the tower lies a performance space that offers views downwards reflected in the mirror underside of a large cantilevered roof lid.
Like the recording studios below, this room is held to the highest standards of the musical professions.
The walls comprise rotating triangular prisms that allow adjusting the acoustics from hard reflection to soft absorption, through a full range of intermediate positions.
A 80cm space between the prisms and the wall gives an additional volume that can be used to increase reverberation times.
A large sky light shows a stunning view of the streets below, reflected in the mirrored underside of the tilted roof lid above.
When this space is rented out for weddings or events, large sliding panels can be moved away to uncover breathtaking views of the city.
From the street level to the top floor, the Open Piano Tower will be a place for music in its most tolerant understanding.
It could become a place for the city and perhaps the world to come together in harmony.
(From competitor's text)
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