The site for a new theatre in Zurich is located at the end of Brauerstrasse at the junction with the city’s central railway tracks. It extends westwards towards Hohlstrasse, which is the main axis between districts 1 and 4, connecting the suburbs of Zurich to its old town, making the site an important urban development hub. The area, which has been strongly influenced by suburban industry since the beginning of the twentieth century, has its own character due to its homogeneity, but lacks a cultural building block that can serve as an identifying point for encounters and exchanges in this transit zone and can give the district a significance.
In an area of traffic and creation, it is important to offer a place that focuses less on the necessary architecture than on an atmosphere of reflection and concentration. Focusing on a performance or the conversations that arise off the beaten track should be the focus of a visit.
By further abstracting the pragmatic architecture and transforming it into a fundamental, magnetic appearance, a seemingly paradoxical space emerges. A place of reliability and curiosity in equal parts.
The proposed building volume communicates with its context in the dialectic of the transit area. It forms a structure that takes up the curve of the track and creates a connection between Hohlstrasse and Brauerstrasse. The new theater is understood as a workshop for the performing arts. A factory, a plaything that presents its product in a flexible empty space. Its slight turning away opens up a forecourt and respects the existing building of the Starkart Art Gallery Zurich, the interaction of which can serve to strengthen the new cultural area. The structure is based on a grid of steel beams supplemented with concrete, which is divided into four segments by three stiffening concrete cores, with the flexible theater hall being the only element also made of concrete cladding. The framework is covered with a light, curtain-like shell made of aluminum, the surface of which absorbs the image of the immediate surroundings and reflects it as a distorted, broken image of reality.
The almost completely closed volume is articulated in the middle towards the street side with a notch and its folding up, thus creating a clear entrance situation for theatergoers, theater employees or interested passers-by. It also forms a canopy for the connected restaurant/bar, which is located at the tip towards Hohlstrasse and can be operated independently of the theater. When entering the foyer, the structure, which extends over three floors up to the roof, is revealed to the visitor. A large opening on the track side provides a view of passing trains and the SBB construction service center Kohlendreieck opposite. Open levels offer visual connections between visitors, theater staff, workers and actors.
The foyer with adjacent box office and cloakrooms serves as a distributor between the theater hall and the bar and, due to its size, can also be used as a lounge area with catering if required. The hall is on the ground floor in the heart of the building. After leaving the foyer, it is entered from the front, delivered from the back or side and entered by the actors. It is understood as a flexible black box that does not follow a traditional theater orientation, but can shift the “Skene” from a frontal view to the middle of the audience depending on the situation. A suspended support structure over the entire surface of the ceiling at a height of 9 meters offers plenty of space for the necessary installations or the possible use of projectors for performing plays in immersion rooms. The sequence of entering the bare foyer structure onto the immediate “Skene” can be interpreted as an inversion of a classic theater entry. You now walk backwards over the theater tower, which is no longer needed, directly onto the stage and become part of the play. The first two floors contain the actors’ rooms, make-up rooms, dressing rooms and the administration. There is a shared space for events or meetings in a separate room above the bar, which can also be used for events. The work area is clearly visible from the outside here via its north-facing shed roof. It extends over the entire length of the building on the top floor and gives it its distinctive shape.
In addition to rehearsal rooms, it also contains a carpentry workshop, painting and sewing rooms. The workshops are supplied via a freight elevator that also serves the theater hall. Space for storage and deliveries via a roller door is located at the head end on the newly created forecourt of the Starkart Art Gallery Zurich.
_
