Amsterdam-based firm UNStudio is used to injecting some architectural theater into cities throughout their home country, with cultural venues for opera and dramatic performances springing up across the Netherlands in the past decade. Following the completion of their angular, orange Theatre Lelystad in 2007 and the rippling, ribbon-like form of the Theatre De Stoep last year, the practice has now been selected to move forward with their design for the “Theater on the Parade” in the Dutch city of Den Bosch.
UNStudio triumphed in an online public vote, winning 57 percent of support from local residents to secure the commission ahead of Rotterdam-based Ector Hoogstad Architecten. The theater is designed to evoke geological formations, a homogenous block of stone being split into four fragments as if under the influence of tectonic movement. The front elevations of the two central blocks are composed of expansive panels of glazing, providing visitors with uninhibited views of the surrounding city.
The use of stone for the external façades references the nearby St. John’s Cathedral, offering a harmonious blend of traditional and contemporary styles surrounding Parade Square, a tree-lined plaza that forms a key public space within Den Bosch. This vernacular material palette lends the building a more textured, less-polished appearance than that usually associated with UNStudio, but retains the parametric flourishes seen in many of the firm’s more futuristic cultural offerings across the Netherlands.
Inside, a four-story, multipurpose public foyer is wrapped with a warm timber veneer — a material that continues into the two auditoriums, including a main hall seating up to 950 people. The ground floor of the foyer and café runs level with the pedestrianized surfaces of the square and can be opened up during summer events to form an extension of the public space.
UNStudio’s proposal will now be developed and submitted for planning permission with an anticipated completion date of 2020.