| Title | Villa Seria |
| Year | 2003 |
| Location | Santa Monica, Los Angeles |
| Brief | A beach house for Farinelli |
| Notes | Morphotectonic design |
This design for a beach house is located on a previously occupied plot on a 60m high cliff overlooking Santa Monica pier and Venice beach. The site is a victim of the Northridge earthquake of 1994 and sits directly above one of Los Angeles’ biggest tectonic fault lines, the Santa Monica fault line. Its perilous location is neither imposed nor accidental, but imperative for the ‘house’ to fulfill its function as an early warning system for earthquakes, a model for seismic study, a bio-ecological performance laboratory and studio, and a holiday home.
¶ The Villa Seria was designed for performers and is the result of a previous investigation into the restrained designs of contemporary performance halls, specifically the Royal Festival Hall. The RFH’s brutal architecture hides vibrant and dynamic performances within insulated double-skin concrete walls. It was designed to keep music and sound from escaping, effectively becoming a performance prison and a fortress. In order to liberate the energy contained within the hall, a device was designed which attached itself to the building’s ventilation shafts, extending them into full public. The device gives a second purpose to the hall’s infrastructure and ventilation systems, turning them into part of its performance repertoire. It senses the living pulses of the auditorium and translates them into music, echoing the lives and events within its walls.
¶ The Villa Seria extends this concept by attaching itself into the ventilation systems of the earth itself and creating a new symbiosis based on buildings and tectonics. It externalises and reacts to the inner workings and energies of the earth. Rather than resisting earthquakes, the Villa Seria accepts and allows them to dynamically reconfigure its space and soundscape. It senses the energy constantly put out by minor tectonic movements underneath it and releases it through metallic pipes that double as ventilation systems and musical instruments blown by the planet’s inner workings. At times of greater tectonic activity the gentle hum exhibited by the house turns into a horn blast and its walls and spaces are reconfigured and transformed.
¶ Just as the Opera Seria Casrtratti singers exhibited sounds of beauty, fruit of the pain and torture their bodies had to endure, so can the Earth display sounds and shapes of beauty through its own torture. Whilst the remainder of Los Angeles may be burning, above Santa Monica the earth sings its own Opera Seria.