Architectural Odes to Emotion
Exploring the Emotional Resonance of Performance Halls
If I were a SHAPE, I would be a CIRCLE! Small as the eye with which I see the wide world, but always looking for harmony, balance and an interconnectedness of all things.
If I were an OBJECT, I would be a PEN! The pen that almost scratches the pages, that sometimes spills its ink, but that continues until it finds its rhythm and manages to write its story!
If I were a FUNCTION, I would be a PERFORMANCE HALL! A complex machine, which contains and transmits a lot of EMOTION!
The performance hall is, I believe, the most complex function with which I came into contact from a very young age, both as a spectator and as a participant in the creative act. The memories of the stage tower and stage pockets and the image of the hall from the stage, remained forever imprinted in my memory.
All my events over the years that revolve around the sphere of performance halls, have a surreal feel, as if the energy that these spaces emanate is reflected in everything it comes into contact with.
Even when I intersected with this world professionally, through #feasibilitystudy or #scenography projects, they were full of elephants with glitter, discussions equal to tempests, and creative workshops where every dream became reality.
With each space visited, from the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus with its exceptional acoustics, to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, from Malmö Live by SHL - Schmidt Hammer Lassen to the Palau de la Música Catalana by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, from the Teatro Massimo in Palermo to The Royal Danish Opera by Henning Larsen, from the Teatro Olimpico by Andrea Palladio, to the Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta, a new layer of knowledge has been added.
As an architect, I always tried to decipher these spaces, I looked for their #visibility curve, the materials from which they were designed, the software with which they achieved a suitable #acoustic, the various mechanisms of the #stage, up to the annex spaces not seen by the spectator during the act of the performance, but the real #emotion happens when the #lights are turned off, the gong rings 3 times, and the curtain slowly moves away, introducing the viewer to a new world, a world to which he is now connected, at least affectively.
The #performance halls are meant to host the powerful creative act and to protect the very sensitive transmission of experiences.
Well, and when there is no show? If it is offered to the #city, then the space becomes a public #plaza. For me, Henning Larsen's The Royal Danish Opera is the perfect place to enjoy my coffee, and for a while it was the place where I secretly supervised Cobe's The Opera Park construction site.
If I were to rephrase Aesop's famous quote, I would say "A city is known by the performance hall it keeps".
Not only does architecture shape our #behavior, but in this case #performance #halls are a significant #political, #cultural and #economic agents. Moreover, the way they are designed says a lot about the city's #values and #beliefs.