The building complex is composed of the former opera workshops from the 1950s, the wood-clad stage tower and the glass box of the theater café. Both new elements frame the entrance at the front, which widens out as a spacious foyer and leads as a working street past glass prop depots and workshops. They could be designed precisely for their function and carry their expression. The wooden tower, for example, offers two superimposed black boxes with perfect heights. The conventional rear operation of technology and performance is visible here on the outside through the veil of the wooden curtain.
Wood is the perfect material for stage setups, for trying things out, for rehearsal situations. The stage tower is first and foremost a place for experimentation. So it was a concern to show this material on the outside as well. Wood is a theatrical material, it has something manageable, something solid that can be worked quickly. As a rule, it serves in the background. It is a material of the provisional, the improvised. On the facade it is relatively rough and gruff, will weather. Inside, however, it also serves to refine surfaces.
The theme of transparency is broken in this house. The stage walkways in the tower only hint at what is taking place inside through light and shadow. But transparency is also evident in the large glazed areas of the interior, for example the fundus rooms. Monstrous things have accumulated there, relatively unorganized. The visitor sees the working material, the costumes, the props.
Roland Duda
Leibnizstr. 60 |m10629 Berlin
030-28 48 860 | mail@ortner-ortner.com