In the midst of a working ranch in Montana, four triangular panels fabricated with steel and wood tilt inward to form an intimate open-air music venue at Tippet Rise Art Center. Geode, designed by Arup, is the latest performing arts space to join the other art and architectural endeavors on the vast 12,500-acre site in Fishtail, Montana.
Robert Doisneau’s photograph of cellist Maurice Baquet atop a mountain with only his stringed instrument, a music stand, and a chair informed the pavilion’s unique shape. According to the designers, it was conceived to depict the harmony between the musician and the natural landscape. The pointed shape of the walls and their natural hue recall the landscape they are very much a part of. The architecture takes cues from the mountains in the distance and mimics the color of the grass.
The four “harmonic polygons” aren’t just visually remarkable, designers and engineers at Arup masterminded them in relation to the natural shapes and textures of the landscape in order to contain sound within the structure, while simultaneously reverberating it into its surroundings. The acoustic technology harnesses the natural bedrock near the surface of the site, the large panels were specifically placed to bounce sound onto the bedrock. This enhances the bass and mid-frequency notes. The woodboards were burned and brushed using a traditional Japanese yakisugi technique known to preserve specific notes and transmit sound at a higher frequency.
Geode wields both the fixed elements of the landscape and unpredictable natural occurrences from its environment to shape the sonic experience. In this way, or in doing so designers and engineers at Arup created an auditory experience that can weather it all.
Anchored in the belief that art, music, architecture and nature are connected and vital to human existence, the cofounders of Tippet Rise, Peter and Cathy Halstead, noted that, “One of the great joys of founding Tippet Rise has been to create a space where experimentation flourishes—in music, in art, in architecture, in poetry, and in so many other ways.”