Discussion: Space to Play - Developments and Trends in Theatre Architecture
In comparison with museum building, theatre architecture has led a wallflower existence for a long time. Since the late 1990s, however, concert halls like Jean Nouvel's KKL in Lucerne, Frank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Santiago Calatrava's auditorium in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the "Wolkenturm" open-air stage in Grafenegg by The next ENTERprise (ill. 9) have become tokens of a tentative burgeoning in this field. The situation can scarcely be compared with developments in the 19th and 20th centuries, of course, when monuments like the opera house in Paris (ill. 1), the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires became urban landmarks. Indeed, buildings of this kind reached such a state of perfection that their concept is still dominant today.
