Interior Design School of Design Uncategorized
Sophia Mackey
I’m Sophia, an interior designer with a theatrical approach to space who aims to create environments that invite interaction and engagement.
My work is rooted in a desire to promote community collaboration in design projects, an approach developed during a five-month study abroad programme at Politecnico di Milano where I worked alongside multidisciplinary teams and explored communal design in depth.
As a prelude to interior design, I studied musical theatre and singing, experiences that continue to influence how I think about rhythm, atmosphere and audience. I view interior design as a form of performance, a choreography of light, texture, sound and movement.
My upbringing in Ireland within a family dedicated to the curation of historic textiles such as linen, and the study of arts and crafts inspired by nature has given me a profound appreciation of natural tactile materials in design. I also enjoy the drama of landscape and carry an old film camera to capture its moods and scenes as an ongoing part of my creative processes.
Finally, I am fascinated by the human interaction with interior design, how people move, think and emotionally react in a particular space. My aim is always to seek to understand how people relate within and are best served by designs that provide practical solutions to interior spatial needs and promote communal wellbeing and life enrichment.
Site
The building is situated in 1 Salisbury Street, Laurieston, Glasgow, G59QX, in the Gorbals area. It is a B listed, three platform railway station built in 1900 by the Glasgow and South Western Railway and formally known as Cumberland Street Station. The station was closed in 1966 and fell into disrepair, though goods trains occasionally still travel on the lines above the station.
Concept
Below the Lines will breathe new life into the redundant railway building, transforming it into a vibrant cultural and community hub, a place for people from diverse backgrounds to communicate through the shared language of music and the arts.
This heritage development of a new music venue aims to attract a diverse audience of local participants, who have no identity with its past community significance. I aim to encourage engagement through hosting well promoted, accessible, music related events that foster an inclusive environment and re-establish connections.
The former railway station building which is divided into two parts by an outdoor tunnel will feature a rent and repair shop for instruments and an instrument lesson learning space in one half, and a main performance space, audience space, bar, cloakroom and reception in the other.
The concept incorporates both daytime and night-time use to ensure the building remains continuously utilised as an accessible facility that illuminates its surroundings attracting attention and admiration of its purpose.
The building will feature commercial and community areas separated by the existing tunnel from the busy road to the garden haven behind. It can be imagined as an instrument that users are guided around on a journey through rhythmical tunnels, spaces and staircases.
Through sensitive design it encourages a seamless transition between its functions with particular attention paid to transitional areas and the use of flexible multi-use spaces that can be adapted for different forms of entertainment.
Circulation- The web of strings
Liminal areas are integral to the design, guiding users toward the main space while offering unique, immersive experiences. The first of these, The Web of Strings is an interactive corridor that invites users to engage with strings attached to the walls; plucking, strumming, or simply brushing past them. This tactile experience explores interactive learning through colour and chromesthesia- “individuals see colours when they hear sounds.”
Acting as a threshold or liminal space, this corridor must be experienced before entering the main event space. A passage to either pass through and admire or stay within to become immersed in sound, movement, and colour. Inspired by the inner workings of a guitar, the corridor represents the neck: a long, narrow space measuring 3 meters in width and height. This leads to a dramatic reveal of the main venue, an expansive area with a barrel-vaulted ceiling that mirrors the resonant body of a guitar.
The Web of Strings is carefully choreographed to build anticipation, relief and wonder, a design principle in architecture known as compression and release. As the user makes their way down the web of stings corridor, the music from the main venue reveals itself more and more.
Luthier’s landing
As the sun rises and the shop opens, the luthier (a maker and repairer of stringed instruments such as violins or guitars) sets up on the mezzanine floor of the rent and repair shop to prepare for a day’s work of repair on varying string instruments. The retail rent and repair shop design has been inspired by the inside of a guitar. The circular skylight window playfully represents the sound hole of a guitar.
The sound hole is “an essential component of stringed musical instruments, enhancing the sound radiation in the lower octave by introducing a natural vibration mode called air resonance.” Plenty of natural light floods in from the skylight for the highly skilled craftwork required in instrument repairs. The skylight opens to allow for good ventilation of the space.
Technical detail 1
The sonar curve desk is situated in the rental and repair shop for string instruments. The desk mimics the sculptural form and half contour of the body of a guitar. The blend of cork, concrete and compressed wood echoes the workshop environment of repair. Including carefully selected materials that can be reused.
The Melville Bar
The bar is named after William Melville, (born 1876) the engineer and architect who designed the building for The Glasgow & South Western Railway company in 1900.
The bespoke bar design draws inspiration from the building’s barrel arched vaulted ceilings. Paying homage to the building’s shapes, accentuates its features more. The design introduces a rhythmic series of vertical ribs behind the bar at a lower human scale level. This brings the grandeur of the ceiling down and creates a complementary blend between the architecture and the interior design. The user enters the bar area after experiencing the interactive strings in the web of strings corridor. The fluted ceiling in that corridor also inspired this shape.
Model
A mixed media approach was used when constructing the 3D model. The facades are laser printed MDF wood. The inside structure was 3D printed in a transparent PLA to allow it to be illuminated when lights are added. The 3D printed inside demonstrates the sheer thickness of the interior support structure which supports the railway above. The inside of the model comes apart to reveal the inside structure and barrel vaulted ceilings.
The flat roof allowed me to design a rooftop garden with a rich green space. It took inspiration from spaces such as the highline in New York which is a 1.5–mile long public park built on an abandoned elevated railroad. The grass and garden is flattened reused moss from an office wall that was being discarded during a renovation.
Branding
The branding ‘Below the Lines’ stems from the building’s new usage taking place below railway lines. It plays on the words and visual of lines. Music notes are placed on a staff which is a set of five horizontal lines on sheet music. I was also inspired by the lines/ strings that make up many string instruments such as guitar, harp and violin.
The division between the lines on the left and right as shown in the poster meeting at the vanishing point signifies the separation of the two parts of the building divided by the open corridor.
The mixture of fonts signify the different types of music that might be heard in the new music centre. The font for the word ‘Below’ is Blues Jazz in bold, this font represents jazz music. The font for the ‘Lines’ the font is in Silom which represents more staccato or electronic music.
I developed several poster designs and used two film camera pictures that I took to inform my colour grading process to come to a final decision on which poster to select.
