Sonata
FAR + DANG
Every year, Latvia’s Sansusī festival takes attendees into the forest to experience some of the best in contemporary music, theater, circus, and dance. As a field of objects, the existing site behaves as a series of independent destinations. The Sonata food court uses the circle as its instrument to create unique yet related movements throughout. It joins the field as both object and connector, fostering connectivity between key destinations and playing off the existing context to “complete” the composition. The design is organized into three sections: catering market, dining space, and picnic garden. The market activates the perimeter and functions as a spatial threshold, and the dining space acts as a porch to the picnic garden — the nucleus celebrating the festival’s rooted sense of community. Following the porch bays, access points respond to concentrated areas of incoming movement from other destinations on the site.
Jury Commentary:
“Even though it’s very sparse, the economy and the moves are very elegant. … It feels very appropriate for a project that’s located in a forest, and it touches the landscape very delicately and uses a simple form to define a communal space, which is very commendable.”
“It’s a very beautiful presentation in terms of its combination of the very simple set of sections with quite evocative images. It shows a kind of matching of the architectural ambition and the way it’s graphically represented.”