A Hundred Hands’ design of TAAQademy is the most decisive evidence of its range of thought. Built to house the studio and music school of Bengaluru-based Indie-rock band Thermal And A Quarter (TAAQ), this is a place shorn of unnecessary flights of fancy. The tenor here repeats the understated and the natural. The curved walls of exposed brick dominate and define the interiors, as most shadows fall on these walls and most activity transpires within their confines.
Sunitha Kondur and Bijoy Ramachandran worked with Didier Weis, Sound Wizard, Auroville to build the ideal space for a band that would like the freedom to test sound limits. The exhaustive sound proofing apparatus here involved acoustic panels, insulation of the floors with rubber panels, steel wool, gyp board, terracotta and plaster of Paris. TAAQademy houses 3 sound-proof jam rooms, practice pods for instruction, an office for three and a retail outlet. Most of it is also visible through the glazed façade. A Hundred Hands’ non-intrusive approach means that the walls here are for guitars and sundry wires and not designer props. The team’s effortless marrying of the technical demands of the space and its own design sensibility is remarkable here.
