Theater:  Architecture of the Horizon

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Date
2013-08-15
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Virginia Tech
Abstract

Architecture exists where the world of ideas meets the world of materials. From its general scheme all the way to the joinery of the floorboards, the proposed building should serve a guiding idea. Otherwise, architecture is not architecture but simply functional construction.

Theater exists within a similar framework, whereby the actor's work is a mundane manifestation of the elements extracted from the world of ideas, making it the perfect conduit to examine the reconciliation of these oppositions: the mundane and the ethereal, the quotidian and the philosophical, the earth and the heavens…

By examining the dichotomous relationship between the tectonic and the stereotomic, the project proposed within these pages provides for a spatial experience that will aid its audience in shedding the entrapments of their daily lives as they proceed towards the auditorium to watch a play. As they move through the building, they will walk through six-foot thick brick walls of heavy stereotomy towards a lighter tectonic environment.  As they approach the architectonic auditorium, the horizon, which they could initially only see through small openings within the massive brick walls, becomes more prominent, reminding them of the spherical nature of our world and the existence of an entire universe outside of our frame of reference - a phenomenon which is symbolic of the world of ideas that provides us with theater and architecture.

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Keywords
theater, Memory, Water, horizon, heavens, earth, stereotomy, tectonic
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