MATTEO TAVAZZI
Architecture - Landscape - Urban Design
THEATRE ACADEMY
2017 - Spreeinsel, Berlin (Germany)
Team: Corsini Michele - Goldoni Michael - Hakobyan Noyemi - Tavazzi Matteo - Tornar Francesco
Supervisors: Vieths Stefan - Bertini Viola
Public Building (Theatre)
The theatre academy is designed on a strategic point on the Museum island in Berlin.
The focus of the project was to represent the building as a city, where the formal and spatial system of the building could have the complexity of a city and the volumes that compose the building can have complete autonomy, with the theatre tower being the monument, the cathedral, of the “city” that was designed. In the process, a series of architectural elements with their variations was developed, a sort of an alphabet , that tie the whole project together and create visual relationship between each component of the building. The project developed from the conceptual level, with the study of the morphology of volumes and spaces, by developing a series of analytical drawings and schemes, to give clarity and precision to the system that wanted to be progressed, up to the level of constructive details and careful choice of materials for the enhancement of the quality of the spaces already projected. The research for the basis of the project consists of multiple theoretical readings, such as: "Collage City", "The City in the City: Berlin as a green Archipelago", "The art of constructing cities", "Dialectic City". With the objective of answering to questions “what is a city”, “how is it formed” and “how it can be interpreted”,
based on analysis from various masters in urban planning and architecture throughout the history and case studies of singular buildings or villas that functioned like cities.
So what is an architectural form for this project and how it can be defined , can it be part of the assemblage composing the city and the island? On the basis of this study and analysis of the morphological tissue and the “mutation” of the area Mitte, an analogical interpretation of the elements composing the city was chosen as the ground for the further development of the project.
The Theatre academy project is situated in the historical center of Berlin Mitte, located in the South-East tip of the Sprea Island. With respect to the Bode Museum on the Museum Island, the project site has a very strong strategic character that needed to be highlighted.
The theatre has strong character compared to the individually standing skyscrapers and buildings in the area, the Theatre Academy would complete the architectural composition of the island and fit into the urban infrastructure of Fisherinseel, giving it its deserved importance with one single building, just like Karl Friedrich Schinkel gave coherence to what was only a disorganized set of parts in the German capital through the realization of
individual buildings of strong urban significance.
The main idea used for the project was designing a building which would have a structure and a complexity of a city. Just like cities, the designed Academy building consists of number of architectural elements: it is a collection of self-contained, coherent, counter-positioned volumes that can stand alone, spaces that represent squares and forecourts of the “monuments” and streets, that lead to primary and secondary spaces.
The spaces were designed in such approach, that with the use of certain architectural elements each space articulates in a different manner, making it obvious to the reader and the visitor the hierarchical relationship between the squares and the buildings. Moreover the spaces are divided into public, semi public and private categories, having an open and articulated planning for functions that are open to public and gradually changing into more strict and closed planning for the rest of the functions. All the elements in the design process (walls, openings, streets, choice of flooring) contribute to the quality of space that was intended to be created and to the sequence by which this spaces change.
