A22_36_Samruddhi Ratnakar

The Serendipity arts festival takes place every year on Santa Monica Jetty. Especially music events that happens on cruises due to lack of sound insulation on jetty. As there are 3 bridges and a main road right near it. Also, the the Jetty does not have a proper parking, sitting or waiting area till there boat arrives. Therefore, the idea of a permanent café comes in, that will expand at the time of festival to become an auditorium. The structure is placed right near the entrance so that people would want to enter.

When one reaches the Jetty from the Chaos of the city to the Chaos of the Jetty in the middle of sun, it becomes important to have a place to sit in silence and shade. A place that will give you relief when entered. But to experience that relief evidently, there must be something different happening before entering that moment. So, when we start to enter in the café from the harsh sunlight to the black box that create a weird feeling and you suddenly become alert and present in the moment. This black box is how the Jetty feels like in evening or night where you can hear everything but you can't see everything clearly. Then you enter a lightbox where you cannot hear anything but what you can see is just the light, this makes you realise that how noisy it is outside. And when you enter the café suddenly the space increases you feel as if you are in the middle of the river where the wind is blowing and minimum noise is entering your ear.

To achieve this special experience, difference in the ceiling height is made from 3 m to 2.7 m to 3.5 m and also the materiality is chosen according to that. The black box is a closed brick wall room with sloping roof to break the connect from outside. The light box has huge double glazing windows on either sides, acoustic panels cladded on roof, thick doors and a thick carpet on floor. The roof for this is Flat roof. The main café has some permanent walls and some movable walls without windows. These movable walls are acoustic louvers made of galvanized sheet framing and acoustic infill that allows both the movement of air and creates visual transparency . At the time of festival when the space increase, acoustic curtains can be used to convert the space in an auditorium. This playful movement comes from the idea of movement of cruises from the jetty to river and again to jetty. The space increases in the direction of circulation of people.

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