Pauls Rietums

Pauls studied architecture at the Glasgow School of Art as well as the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Parralel to his studies, Pauls works with printmaking and investigates the technical drawing as a communication medium.

Pauls’ third year work at the Mackintosh School of Architecture looked at developing a venue and accomodations for a music education charity.

Project description:

Instead of taking place in sparse acoustic venues, Sistema orchestras have always dwelled in non-specialist settings directly within communities in need, prioritising social action over education tradition. How can a venue custom built for Sistema maintain this notion? To address this, Sistema’s methods were compared to those of Levi Strauss’ bricoleur. Similarly to a bricoleur, who “creates structures by means of events”, Sistema defines a venue by holding orchestra recitals in the available settings. By doing so, Sistema is shaped by the conditions and accessible resources, but at the same time can create new meanings and events within the environment. The response to the brief is not a design of a new building to be placed on the site, but rather an assemblage of the honest and mundane objects of the River Leven. A frame of one of warehouses on the riverbanks is dismantled and moved to a parking lot on the Balloch pier. There, it is furnished with rooms akin to giant bunkbeds and inhabited by the orchestra. A place to celebrate the education program and the unspectacular River Leven.