The assignment was to design spaces for a temporary theatre festival in an abandoned stadium in the centre of Hsinchu City in Taiwan.
The project aims to create a temporary space interwoven into the fabric of Hsinchu, capable of attracting and involving visitors and making them discover or re-discover the power and beauty of theatre by extending the lively, engaging and public character of the adjacent night market and more generally the surrounding city, into the existing stadium.
To create an effectively sustainable urban intervention, the pillars of the stadium will support a new truss structure that will be reused after the theatre festival, giving new life to the abandoned stadium, transforming it into an important place for cultural, social and commercial events.
This truss structure will carry the temporary, delicate design for the theatre festival itself: a series of light, hanging steel frames wrapped in white debris net, which subtly delimitate and articulate the pillarless space underneath. Curtains flowing from the frames confine or divide spaces where necessary.
The spacial organisation follows a gradient from the main street and night market entrances: a chaotic mix of smaller spaces with a market/street atmosphere gradually leads the public along the bigger, raised stages, to the main large multimedia theatre. This asset is extremely flexible and allows for endless combinations between different stages and spaces.