Transformation in Practice: Centralteateret
Fall 2022
The studio will work with the transformation of Centralteateret in the centre of Oslo. The theatre is a cultural building of complex provenance, making it an ideal case study for working with existing buildings. The first iteration of Centralteateret dates back to the late 18th century, and the theatre has since gone through several transformations. Unique to Centralteateret, these layers are still visibly intact to reveal the rich history embedded in the building's fabric. The different areas share a near undisturbed patina. These qualities should be cultivated rather than sanitised in future scenarios.
A theatre is a machine for illusion and storytelling, where the architecture is working hard to signify and symbolise, flatter, and seduce. The studio will study these aspects of the building to look for ways to improve the existing condition. The studio will propose projects transforming the theatre through a surgical analysis of the many spaces and components of the building. The studio's output will be a series of interventions, provocations and extensions that balance the need to preserve the existing condition with the building's potential for future use.
The studio will be organised into three parts:
Survey: The studio will lend considerable attention to understanding the building through on site investigations to study the interwoven layers of theatrical architecture from different historical periods. Surveys will quantify physical properties and the qualified values such as significance, symbolism, and tradition. Recordings will document the intersection between historical periods to understand the evolution of architectural thinking about a particular typology.
Artefact: The survey will be the foundation for the artefact, a large-scale material model that starts the inverted design process from fragment to building. The model is a physical and material manifestation of an essential component or junction found in your survey, translated into a three-dimensional piece at a detailed scale. This 'hot-spot' is a free-standing bricolage of materials that suggests something more than the sum of its parts. The original is not a prescriptive tool but the starting point for new designs and the representation of new artefacts.
Proposal: Students will work iteratively to find an appropriate and feasible way of constructing an architectural project that has contemporary relevance and engages with the existing building. Building on close observations of the context, students will develop their own architectural and technical agenda (an architectural intervention, a strategy for maintenance, a performance or a methodology to improve the use of the building based on an understanding of current challenges).
Projects will answer to the specifics of the building whilst being relevant to the broader discourse on the future of this type of building. The architectural proposal will be developed through large-scale material models, both analogue and digital, and architectural drawings. Craft will inform contemporary construction methods and material exploration by learning from what has already been built.
