Strange Visitor

3B Option Studio | Music, Architecture and the City | 2016

Studio coordinator: Marie-Paule Macdonald, University of Waterloo

Strange Visitor is a music and cultural centre located at the mouth of the Keating Channel in the currently abandoned Essroc Cement Silos. The existing structure of the silos is monumental and they hold a distinct presence when viewed from the Gardiner Expressway, the water and the sky.

In addition to being a cultural attractor within the city,  Strange Visitor is intended to be a platform for musical exploration through performance, listening and research. The architecture is derived from the creative process of an electronic music artist Richard D James, who uses the stage name Aphex Twin. The challenge of the studio was to understand the creative goals of a musician or sound artist and develop a program and building that would realize these ideas. 

Aphex Twin’s music is a complicated experience. It is dense, with layers of rhythms, tones and sounds that are completely original. Movement and flexibility throughout the building support the experimental nature of the program. The silos are heavy and dense, housing unique acoustic spaces that can be experienced through a series of moving platforms. New possibilities in music and sound are introduced through the  rotating cone in the outdoor performance space, which are fed into the building’s dance club. These various moments allow for new relationships to form between artists and their sounds, the listeners and the performer, as well as amongst the audience themselves.