Theatre interior development

Theatre interior development

Looking at the floor space - which is similar to a contour map - the contours continue down. The lowest points in the floor (shown as the black pits in the renders below) are reinforced structural glass, so they can be stood on, yet they are transparent and you can see through to the river below.

The walls/external structure of the building has become a organic form (though still with softened angles like the story bridge).

These sketches are yet to be uploaded.

External surface resolution

Resolving the external surface of the suspended building.

Option 1












Here, the abstracted lines become more dense at one end and open up at the other end. This allows more permeability and visibility at the theatre end (note: theatres are spheres not the cylinders shown - they simply mark the floor plan)
The open sections of the surface are digital glass whereby imagery can be projected through the surface (they become illuminated and only partially see through) however they can be turned back to just glass and be transparent as shown).

Option 2



Opposite to the above option. This uses the same principles of having the angled lines focussed at one end.

This option would be in reverse to the first option above as the denser end of the design and hence the area with more permeability should be overlaid over the theatre end of the building to give more dominance to it.

This option could be intergrated with the first to alternate from day-night depending on which space (restaurant or theatre) is being used the most.


Option 3

This is different from the previous two, whereby each section in between the diagonal slashes are raised/pop out from the main building. This gives focus to the negative space - i.e. the spaces in between the struts of the bridge or the slashes on the facade. I also considered that it could be an abstraction of a model of the city, with streets running in between the various blocks and buildings. By making one end of the facade more raised than the other, it appears like a map of the valley/city boundary, with medium rise buildings progressing into high rise/density.

It also provides a texture/scale-like geometry to the facade. Of course, digital glass could be applied to the individual 'scales' or 'blocks' to allow transparency or project onto, thus leaving the slashes solid. Alternatively, the digital glass could be applied to the slashes (they become like windows for the people inside) and the scales or blocks remain solid.

Preliminary 3D theatre model

I have been working on this model in 3DS Max, modelling the theatre spaces. At this stage, I have been concentrating on the exterior of the domes - the internal immersive environment will be modelled with a simple hemisphere and I will photoshop various panoramic images on the internal surface in a series of vignettes to depict the experience of the theatre-user. However this external waiting space is very important to the experience and hence these renders below begin to describe the spatial qualities more elegantly than the physical model.














Theatre domes interconnected (incomplete). Steps will eventually circumvent all domes.
















Cluster of domes - internally a progression from one to the next takes place.

















Approaching the domes from roughly a person's point of view.

Theatre dome massing studies

A couple of massing studies done in Revit, looking at the volume and interconnectivity of the theatre domes. I am interested particularly in the intersection between the individual domes.

Interior space development

After much sketch development and exploration, I have made some rough card models to explore the spatial qualities of the exterior of the theatre space - ie. the room in which people wait before entering the domes/theatres, which sit like dark, ominous barrows, buried beneath the illuminated contours surrounding them. In deed there is almost an ethereal quality to the illuminated domes. The spatial qualities of this 'preparation/waiting area' and the audience's awareness of their impending decent under the domes for the performance to begin, creates an anticipation and the forms help to heighten the excitement.