Check mate, world. The amazing creative minds from Japan have done it again.
From the country that’s made more sci-fi fantasies a reality than anywhere else on the globe now comes a mad but marvellous design that crosses what looks like an enormous jumping castle with a mobile concert venue shaped like an enormous, squishy plum
The ‘Ark Nova’ is the world’s first inflatable concert hall, able to hold 500 punters and can be ‘constructed’ in just two hours.
The portable music venue is getting its worldwide debut as part of Sweden’s Lucerne Festival, which will be travelling to Matsushima in the Miyagi Prefecture on Japan’s East Coast, before deflating and travelling around the continent, as Gizmodo reports.
Kick-starting its program on 27th September, the Ark Nova will host performances from the Sendai Philharmonic, traditional Japanese kabuki theatre, children’s music workshops, as well as several classical orchestra performances and a concert from famed Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto until early October across the country.
The inflatable structure’s coated polyester also provides great acoustics – thanks to sound designer Yasuhisa Toyota – with a doughnut-like hole striking through the centre of its puffed-up innards actin as a kind of support that can withstand poor weather and high wind conditions.
The pump-up music hall was conceived and designed through a collaboration between Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor, and Kajimoto Agency. The Ark Nova is based on Kapoor’s previous inflatable structures, including the womb-like multi-roomed Leviathan, a gigantic blow-up chamber housed inside Paris’ Grand Palais.
The mobile Ark Nova isn’t just another artsy design though, the inflatable venue was conceived back in 2011 as a low-cost solution to hosting relief concerts for the tsunamis that obliterated Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture in March 2011, as Consequence Of Sound points out.
The combination of the tsunamis and the 9.0 earthquake in March 2011 killed nearly 19,000 people and was the catalyst for the Fukushima nuclear plant crisis, one of the worst atomic accidents and natural disasters in history.
“The images of 11 March, 2011 have left their mark on all of us,” said Michael Haefliger, the artistic and executive director of the Lucerne festival in a press release. “With the Lucerne Festival Ark Nova Project we hope to give the people who are living with this situation something more than everyday pleasure. Combining different arts and cultures, this project is a fascinating symbiosis of architecture, design, folkloristic and classical music as well as music education.”
Additionally, the Ark Nova’s theatre uses wooden benches and acoustic reflectors that have been crafted and recycled from Matsushima cedar, form tress damaged during the tsunamis and the famed woods found within the nearby Zuiganji Temple.
Assuming no errant bobby pins are let off inside the space, it’s a brave new frontier for portable music.
(Images: Lucerne Fetival Ark Nova 2013 Source: http://ark-nova.com/en/matsushima)
