Layered Memories

The city evolves.
The land once occupied by gas factories and brick warehouses has changed face to become housing blocks and commercial premises. But the memories of the past remain, imprinted into the street patterns, forgotten in the tucked away corners of the landscape, ghostly floating in the air; gently changing tones and shades, with history permanently stained on the landscape.

The building evolves.
Once a warehouse that stored goods and merchandize from all over the world, transforms itself into a venue for creating music to be distributed worldwide. The dynamics of the architecture resides in its capacity to allow the inhabitants to transform the surrounding fabrics of buildings to suit their needs: the reminiscence of the past retained on the exposed brick walls and crude steel trusses above. And it changes continuously. As the graffiti on the wall of the original U2 studio, the memories of the individuals are layered onto the building one after the other, constituting the complexity and excitement of the activities within the building and among the surroundings.

The industrial building components together carry the memories of the buzzing docklands in the past: heavy industry, generating the energy for the city, hard and almost inhumane scale of activities. They were assembled. One by one, these elements were put together to create a new function, a new life, and a new docklands for the future. The industrial building elements, taken solely as a visual reference at the beginning, three dimensionally collaged together to create a new landmark for the city at the gateway, creates a beacon for the city to the future.

Assembled building elements are transformed from their original role into the role of the new building. The ground floor and first floor are occupied with a bar/restaurant and shop/amenities in the main building, and a 3-story nightclub in the small building at the south end of the site. The second and third floor in the main building consist of general office space with access to the roof garden platform at each level. The tower on the north side is occupied by different sized flats throughout, with the U2 studio space on the top two levels. The top of the tower extends beyond the envelope profile to create a larger private roof garden for the studio. Collaged industrial elements emerge, partially transformed, systemized to establish the required functions of the proposed building. However, the essence of the original feature is retained as far as possible to portray the past and stimulate the inhabitants to the vision of what is to come.

The docklands always carries a nostalgic ambience in the air. The restlessness of the factory and warehouse; the crude and harsh environment somehow draws people and to find comfort and restfulness there. As the face of nature slowly but surely transforms itself, the human may only find comfort in such a dynamic environment where the harshness and calmness resembles nature more than the manmade city. Our proposal carries the spirit of the docklands as an acknowledgement to its history, above all the human traffic below, shining its lights to the unknown, guiding us all through the ghost of the past to the journey beyond.