Theatre and architecture

University of Karachi, Department of Visual Studies

Project idea

The idea of this project was to design a theatre based on Bertolt Brecht's philosophy, a famous writer.
His plays always spoke the harsh truth, He was the one who broke all the traditional practices of theatre and dismissed the idea of dramatic theatre, and introduced Realism. His theatres had a sense of incompleteness as he always ended his theatre with an incomplete ending. He introduced the concept of the 4th wall which is the breaking of traditional practices. He used to create some disconnection and breaks in his theatres to aware his audience that whatever they are watching is just a play and reality is different.

Depicting his thoughts on architecture made me design a piece of architecture that has a sense of realness, harshness , and incompleteness. temporariness, element of uniqueness, and element of disconnection

Project description

This project has 4 main programs which are
a closed auditorium, an open auditorium, a playspace, and an administration space.
The closed auditorium is underground with the backstage connected with a ramp from the rear side of the building. The project's entrance has a gift shop, ticketing space, and exhibition space. the offices of the admin space and meeting rooms are on the upper level which is then connected by a separate ramp from the back. Then there's an open auditorium which has no ticketing space and is open for everyone. This space is accessed by a ramp at the front of the building. the open cafe is also connected with the open auditorium so people can enjoy both at the same time. there's a space for food carts under the open auditorium which are for the food carts that were already there on the site. there's a playspace that has multiple planes at different heights making a jungle gym for the kids to explore the space on their own. As the project has some sense of incompleteness there are a plenty of room for future offices in shape of containers at different heights

Technical information

The construction of the project is done with scaffolding steel structure along with shipping containers.