Completed October 23, 2003, The Walt Disney Concert Hall celebrates its tenth anniversary today. Home to the LA Philharmonic, it has received wide acclaim for its excellent acoustics and distinctive architecture. In the decade since its opening, the hall's sweeping, metallic surfaces have become associated with Frank Gehry’s signature style.
Night View (Front). Image Courtesy of Asymptote Architecture
New York based Asymptote Architecture have unveiled designs for a new Centre of Performing Arts in Sejong, South Korea. Described as celebrating "the cities emergence and growth as a place of stature and culture," the arts centre is designed to "seamlessly connect to the city fabric." Containing two theaters, the program of the building has been designed to create a unified experience, allowing for a "powerful and 'episodic' interiority and experience."
Designed by NRJA + IG Kurbads, their ‘Show Under Skin’ proposal for the reconstruction of the new Riga Theatre corresponds to the dynamism of the creative process within the theater - minimalist, smooth finish, combined with a twisted in a motion stopped volume.The skin is a multi-functional covering structure which is connected with the historical volume, covering it and combining various features and space dimensions in a single organic volume, also matching different adjacent building heights. More images and architects’ description after the break.
New York-based, Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramović has successfully secured funding via Kickstarter for phase one of an interdisciplinary performance and education center in Hudson, New York. The project, known as the Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art (MAI), aims to be the first crowdfunded cultural institution ever to be built as well as the only international arts center dedicated to presentation and preservation of long-durational work. With the help of Abramović’s “global community of collaborators,” OMA will now move forward with the project’s design development process. More information on the MAI’s design can be found here.
Designed by PM²G Architects, their inspiration for their finalist proposal in the international competition for the Temporal Sustainable Theatre came up from the cultural and physical aspects of the region where Cardiff is based. The history of the country has been marked by the welsh coal mining industry resulting in a bumpy landscape which the architects used as a departure point for developing the idea of using it as the stage where the audience are the users, the actors and also the ones who try to discover what is inside and outside, giving freedom for exploration. More images and architects' description after the break.
Inspired by the movement of the curtain, an element inherently connected with the theatre, this second prize winning proposal for the Operlab competition focuses on this movement to induce the emotions of the viewers. Designed by Rafal Oleksik and Krzysiek Stepien, it was crucial in the proposed concept of the pavilion to induce such emotions to encourage people to enter the facility, and at the same time, allow them to become a part of the show whether it be exhibitions, screenings, a concert or a discussion. More images and architects’ description after the break.