New Theater in Warsaw

Honourable mention (as one of 10 final works in this international competition, which attracted more than 230 offices)

stage: competition, 2nd phase
year: 2008

The New Theater, as each and every artistic institution plays important role in creating city's cultural life through its creative activities and promotion of art. Moreover the institution is also involved in its perhaps most significant role - organising and cultivating social life of city's inhabitants. Theater, or more appropriately, its whole complex should promote not only perception of art, but also its constant display and allow for seamless transition between all types of spectacles. Theater should allow both, an actor and a spectator, to lose himself in the world of art at least during the time of play. When the doors shut, border dividing ones on stage from the others watching should disappear.

The design is aiming to provide best possible conditions for performing theatrical plays in this post-industrial fabric, completing it with sharp dominant extension closing main atrium and housing all additional administrative functions. By providing this traditional and easily adaptable layout we allow for realisation of any interdisciplinary projects, from still art display, through performance art and ending with theater.

Such edifice should then be characterised by abstract architecture and highly non-commercial symbolics, having saved original genius loci. To achieve this type of effect we have proposed this low-key architecture emphasizing original character of the depot building.

We would like The New Theater to be changed by the presence of its new inhabitants, the actors and performers only. Any visual communication elements have to correspond with language of architecture and as a main notion of advertisement for the building's new function we propose neon lights using original Warsaw-originated typography.