Bluefrog Music Club
The strategies of hybridization of the 90s, more often than not, resulted in the smooth blending of one tectonic surface with another. Accompanying this tendency was the belief that the formal procedure of blending will naturally result in the cross-breeding of a program.
BlueFROG for us is a project that revisits the problem of multi-programmed spaces without resorting to formal redundancy as a representation of programmatic complexity. The project brief called for the conversion of a large north-lit industrial warehouse within the old mill district in Mumbai into a complex of sound recording studios and an acoustic lounge. This lounge consists of a restaurant, bar, and a live stage. Beyond this amalgamation of provisions, BlueFROG seeks to stage an acoustic experience par excellence.
photography by © Fram Petit
Based on this desire of the project brief to have it all, the question for us is: how do you collapse a theater, restaurant, bar and club into a warehouse, whilst maintaining all the performative characteristics of each individual type?
The deep structure that has been employed is a cellular organization composed of circles of varying sizes approximating a horse-shoe configuration in plan. The differential extrusions of these circles, encapsulated at different levels as tiered cylindrical seating booths, allow the eye level of diners and standing patrons to increase in height away from the stage. The booths seat four to ten people and are arranged around an open center that can either double up as a potential 360° stage or accommodate standing patrons, bringing them closer to the main stage. The mahogany paneled cylindrical booths not only maintain uninterrupted views to the stage but also a constant distance between diners irrespective of how crowded the lounge gets.
photography by © Fram Petit
The undulating height of the seating booths is gently modulated by a glowing acrylic resin surface, which unifies the disparate types and retains the presence of the architecture even in the midst of the spectacle of a sound and light show.
It can be argued that the programmatic multiplicities here arise out of the disposition of the irreducible typal imprints harnessed from the above-mentioned precedent types. And it is these deep structures that give rise to the multiple programmatic configurations without the project resorting to any strategies of formal convolution.
photography by © Fram Petit
Project Info
Architects: Serie Architects
Location: Mumbai, India
Client: Blue Frog Media Pvt. Ltd.
Design Team: Chris Lee, Kapil Gupta, Tomas Ruis Osborne, Santosh Thorat, Purva Jamdade, Suril Patel, Dharmesh Thakker, Niti Gourisaria, Vrinda Seksaria and Udayan Mazumdar.
Models: Joseph Halligan and Michelle Young
Acoustic Design: Munroe Acoustics (UK)
Lighting Design: Abhay Wadhwa Associates
General Contractors: Zigma Enterprises
Project Managers: Masters Management Consultants
Status: Completed Nov 2007
Area: 1,000 sqm
Type: Restaurant
Photography: Fram Petit
