Phoebe Yu

Throughout history music has been profoundly tied to nature and culture. As the trend of consuming music on personal devices grows, music is becoming more and more alienated from the immediate environment we inhabit. Situating itself on the land of the Victorian Volcanic Plains, the rehabilitated quarry offers opportunities to reconnect music with people and the volcanic legacy.

An amphitheatre accommodates dry and wet music festivals; a music school, whose pedagogy encourages the improvisation of eco-music; a sound pavilion offers curated acoustic journeys of pre-recorded sounds, and a revegetated park is the interface among the programs.

The project challenges the conventional understanding of music and thus proposes the dissolution of the distinction between sound and music. Through the integration of natural and built landscape on site, the site itself behaves like a musical instrument that establishes an immersive soundscape. A variety of layers of sounds, including but not limited to, live natural sounds, recorded sounds and formal compositions, could be acoustically experienced.