Amasha Samaratunge

Converging Volumes: Making... of Vi(nyl)olins

The gentle strum of a violin in the near distance.

The shuffling of vinyls into their sleeves.

The whirring of the hydraulic press, compressing, pulsating, disrupting.

My senses are indulged. There’s a warmth, a metallic clang – I move towards it.

Converging Volumes engages with two programs of making – vinyl record manufacture and violin repair.

The vinyl making process is established within the existing Cartesian grid, while violin making processes occur within the new shifted grid. The two volumes of making collide at The Vessel- a seminal junction between programs and between the new and existing architecture.

The project honors an ethos of making by showcasing all aspects of work to those who enter. Violin repairers offer musicians an opportunity to engage with a making process themselves to record their music onto the vinyl record.

The design creates a space in which violinists are empowered through their immersion into a making process which intersects and celebrates the violin and the vinyl. Materiality and surface, the function of the workspace and levels of interaction are key architectural drivers.