“Space is the
breath of art.”
-
Quote by Frank Lloyd
Wright
A
living being is identified by the space it occupies. A territory (space) is
marked by the way a living organism moves and acts. The connectivity felt by
the organism, with its surroundings, is influenced by the aura and environment
it resides in. Studies in environmental psychology suggests that, Ancient Greek
structures were built according to the emotional responses of people. In
medieval times, battle music triggered an emotion in the listeners to kill.
When a royalty is placed on an elevated platform, it shows who leads and
creates respectful attitude among people. The integration of sensitivity of
humans in structures is part of the design process since centuries. Architecture
is a medium of communication between the user and its aura. The different
languages used are the design details, materials, spaces and voids.
Modern Architecture exists as a proof
of interaction between human and structure, where an object surface acts as a
mediator for exteriority and interiority of an environment. This interaction is
influenced by every design decision made in art and architecture.
Ar.
Jeanne Gang believes in the collaboration of inhabitants with their place of
existence. She talks about bringing together communities to maintain an
ecological and healthy environment in the structures she designs. This
inspiration comes from a macro scale of the relationship between cities and
natural ecosystems. Human interaction is the key to create harmonious space and
nurturing its true form. It is an invisible force that has a parallel potential
of the architectural design process.
Taking
inspiration from Ludwig Hilberseimer who introduced Bauhaus in America, Mies
Van Der Rohe brought minimalism, Rem Koolhas believed in cultural roots meeting
contemporary needs; Gang offers the world a strategic foundation of design by deliberating
the project program. She challenges the parameters and comes up with the best
of solutions. She approaches the problems with experimental practices which
helps her think beyond the scope of just designing.
There
is a method of segregation of projects by her studio, according to the approach
for the program, in her book Building/Inside Studio Gang Architects edited by
Jeanne Gang and Zoe Ryan from Art Institute of Chicago. They talk about
foundations as a historical background of the studio’s inspirations for few of
their featured projects. The themes used for the projects are Nature, Density,
Community, Performance. Although a few categories may have a similar ideology
of bringing a community together, their projects are divided according to the
programs. Studio Gang has various buildings known to the architectural
fraternity and are also part of the Chicago skyline. One of the less talked
about buildings are The Writer’s Theatre in Glencoe, Illinois.
Founded
in 1992 in Glencoe, a northern suburb of Chicago, Writer’s Theatre is a
nationally acclaimed company who conduct live theatre performances based on
words written by artists. They started off their performances in a small
bookstore. They have now captivated Chicagoland audiences with inventive
interpretations of classic work, a bold approach to contemporary theatre and a
dedication to creating the most intimate theatrical experience possible. Michael
Halberstam, the artistic director and co-founder of Writer’s theatre is himself
a performer in theatrics and understands the need of connecting his audience to
his artwork through performance. The company aims with every act to connect the
viewer to the words of the play and the creative process of the artist. When
the audience is closer to the performer in a more intimate setting, they become
part of the environment and submerge in the emotions created by the act. Any
form of communication from one human to another is an act. There are just
different languages used. Drama is a language which communicates the emotions
of the play through the façade of actors who create the entire ambience within
the intimate space. Published in her book, Jeanne Gang had a synergetic
conversation with Michael Halberstam as part of her design process to
understand his intentions for the architecture of the theatre. Their notions
for the various architectural and artistic connotations created intellectual
moments.
The
Writers Theatre finished construction in 2016. Taking the site of the theatre,
it is in a prime location near the Glencoe train station and is surrounded by
The Glencoe Church and the public library. This community concentrated area is
clustered together to create an environment of public gatherings.
Figure 1:
Level 1 Plan. Image Source @studiogang
The
different areas of the building create certain moments while transitioning
through one space to the other. The lobby seating at the entrance, is a
welcoming open space which makes you reach out to the stepped seating and
admire the exterior surroundings beyond the two-story glass and wood façade.
In
earlier times, the first men of the world gathered around a fire in the forest
to share stories with each other and that became the foundation of theatre. The
lobby acts as the first stage with the potential for informal performances and
gatherings. The glass curtain of the building and wooden vertical members with
tall trees around, become the backdrop for the stories in the space.
Figure 2:
Lobby seating acts as informal performance and multi-functional space. Image
source @studiogang
The
eastern façade of the lobby opens to the park outside to connect to the
community around the building. Here the environment is associated with the
neighboring community to create the illusion of connectivity of nature with
built space.
Figure 3:
East facade opening to the park, creating an indoor-outdoor space for community
connection. Image Source @studiogang
The
walkway inside the building, from the lobby towards one of the theatres, Black
Box Theatre, is as they name it, “Bookstore” Theatre Walkway. The wall of the
passage contains a series of bookshelves with performance inspired books and
old Glencoe histories. The other surface gives a soothing view of the existing
east park on site. The Black Box Theatre seats 50-99 audience members and can
be arranged in various configurations, making the design modular according to
the performance pieces.
Figure 4:
A section through the lobby, Canopy walkway, Library passage, Black Box
Theatre. This demonstrates the different transitional space with its individual
moments. (Ryan 2012)
The
Black Box Theatre is also named as the Flexible Theatre. The company’s main
motive of intimacy is experienced the most in this type of theatre design.
The
Tribune stairs in the lobby leads up to the second level to the Grand Gallery
walk or The Canopy Walkway termed by Jeanne Gang. This wooden marquee acts as a
viewing gallery in the lobby and the front porch façade of the project. The
wooden cross bristles of the canopy are like a breathing surface for the
building which creates a beautiful illumination at night. There are a lot of
wooden elements used in the building: roof trusses, staircase, lattice façade,
canopy beams, exterior cladding which is necessary to blend with the existing
nature on site. It is a sustainable and modern design innocuous to the
surroundings.
The
studio experiments with wood by dissecting all the different typologies to
extract its properties and challenge its strength. The lattice wooden members
are made of light wood, Port orford cedar, used by native Americans to make
bows. The grain of the wood is symbolically straight which made it easier for
them to split and make insertions of curved triangular pieces to create the
joint of tension. The architect termed it “The cat’s paw.” These modules are
assembled between two horizontal wooden beams as tension holders.
The following
link shows how Ar. Jeanne Gang and engineer Peter Heppel visited the
fabrication studio of Trillium Dell Timberworks to understand the entire wooden
joinery process and watch the whole piece come together. They had to be very
careful and confident with their experiment since this type of usage of wood is
not permitted according to the Code of Conduct.
Figure 5:
Canopy Walkway or Grand Gallery Walk. Image Source @studiogang
This walkway creates a naturally elevated transition space for the audience leading them to be in a serene mood of connection with the ecology so that they can fully be a part of the performance acts inside the theatre.
In
the early 1500s, in England, church art was forbidden or destroyed, and the
medieval period of art was over.
A style of architecture named for the Tudor kings developed in England during
this time. King Henry VII (1485-1509) and King Henry VIII (1509-57) had much to
do with the development of English art and architecture. The Tudor style of
architecture combined characteristics of English Gothic with features of the
Italian Renaissance style. The main feature of Tudor architecture was the
half-timber style. Wooden frames were filled with plastered panels, and the
open timber roofs were painted in gold and bright colors. Tudor manor houses
contained rooms of different sizes to reflect their different uses: summer and
winter parlors, private dining rooms, and, in some cases, as many as forty
bedrooms. Outside, a formal garden, often planted with herbs, surrounded the
manor house.
Figure 9:
Tudor Architecture showing wooden frame structure on the facade. Image source
@ontarioarchitecture.com
Inspired
by these middle-class houses made of timber members, Jeanne Gang wanted to
design this village centric theatre to honor the evolution of theatre from the
Elizabethan era to 20th century Modernism. The Tudor architecture
also inspired Mies Van de Rohe because of the visible proportionate frames
after a long era of load bearing walls. Hence the cage-like structure of the
theatre resonates with that of Mies’s steel frames but with a warmer and softer
touch of the natural timber.
Beyond
the grand staircase and the walkway is the rooftop garden and terrace which
offers a view of the west side park and downtown Glencoe to the south. There is
a patron’s lounge on the terrace which provides an indoor-outdoor space for
corporate and special events. Right below the rooftop garden is a rehearsal
room and special events room whose one side wall is a floor to ceiling glass
façade with curtains, providing a view of the west side park. This room is one
of the first spaces which gives an option of rehearsing on-site for the
artists.
Figure 10:
Rooftop Terrace and Garden along with Patron's Lounge. Image Source @studiogang
Figure 11:
Rehearsal Room below the rooftop garden on level 1. Image Source @studiogang
From
the main lobby, the audience enters the 250-seating capacity theatre, assembled
in an Elizabethan theatre pattern. The seats are arranged in different clusters
with entrances from the gaps between the clusters for performance theatrics.
There is no raised stage for the acts which initiates closeness between the
audience and the act. The absence of virtual separation by a raised platform,
generates better communication between two organisms.
Figure 12:
250 seat theatre with cluster formation for intimacy between performer and
audience. Image source @ (Ryan 2012)
The
back wall of the theatre is made of the bricks used in the previous structure
which was a public library, torn down for making way for the writer’s theatre.
The positioning of the bricks is such that the performers’ voices need not be
modulated, and their natural pitch would reach every member in the audience.
Such is the power of architecture where we can omit the external technologies
just to form an acoustic intimacy to form a natural connection.
Figure 13:
Study models for different types of theatre seating. Image source @ (Ryan 2012)
Figure 14:
Brick pattern for the theatre walls for better acoustics. Used from previous
structure. Image Source @studiogang
All the main service areas are situated at the north and west sides of the building, not visible from the main south and east facades. These areas include the theatre back-of-house, green rooms, performer’s suite and loading deck. The zoning and placements of areas in the project was fundamental for the site because of the influence of village-cluster architecture in Glencoe. The different typologies of the theatre are placed in a format that forms a cluster around the lobby, which is the building’s central hub. Just like the location of the theatre, in the downtown area of Glencoe.
Figure 15:
Sketch contemplating a cluster of theatre volumes oriented around a gathering
space. Image source @ (Ryan 2012)
Sensitivity
towards the user experience by designing moments of transition is
architecture’s role in performance. The eternal satisfaction of completely
being engrossed in the performance of architecture, is what the architect and
the client looks for in such a project. The connectivity on the second floor
with the canopy of trees and walkway is not the only level at which the
building communicates. The southern façade of the building has a gradient porch
stacked with broken concrete slabs. Interestingly, the children of the
neighborhood used that space as a step-and-run play area. This is what Jeanne
Gang means in terms of community.
Figure 16:
Kids using front porch as a fun play area. Image source @studiogang
The
Writers Theatre weaves every single part of architecture into the pattern of
one big idea: It is a building that has space with the heroic performance in
cedar and glass, crisply gives way to plain cementitious plaster on the service
façades outside and detailing within. Michael Halberstam quoted in one of the
interviews, “You see buildings that are designed for the drama of the building and
not for the performance of the space itself. What Jeanne has given us is a
sense of occasion, a space of preparation,” and, in that sense, an architecture
that, fully finds its form in the complexities of the anticipation, perception
and participation undertaken by its audience.
Awards
won by the project:
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Merit Award Recipient, Illumination Awards
(Lightswitch), 2017
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Finalist, The Plan Awards, Culture, 2017
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Jury and Popular Choice Winner, Architizer
A+ Awards, 2017
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WoodWorks Wood Design Awards, 2017
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Shortlist, Cultural Spaces Category, World
Architecture Festival, 2016
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Institute Honor Award, Interior
Architecture, American Institute of Architects, 2016
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Honor Award, Divine Detail, Design
Excellence Awards, AIA Chicago, 2016
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Honor Award, Interior Architecture, Design
Excellence Awards, AIA Chicago, 2016
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Citation of Merit, Distinguished Building,
Design Excellence Awards, AIA Chicago, 2016
Bibliography
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Architects,
Studio Gang. 2017. Projects- Writers Theatre.
http://studiogang.com/project/writers-theatre_2.
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Augustin, Sally. 2009. Place Advantage: Applied
psychology for interior architecture. John Wiley and sons inc.
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Gang, Jeanne, interview by MAGALI ROBATHAN. 2017. CLAD
features for leisure architects, designers, investors & developers
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—. 2011. Reveal. Chicago: Princeton Architectural Press.
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Kyles, Shannon. n.d. Tudor.
http://www.ontarioarchitecture.com/Tudor.htm.
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Paul Keskeys, Architizer Magazine. 2017.
"Architectural Details: Studio Gang’s Unique Wood Façade." architizer.com.
https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/jeanne-gang-writers-theatre/.
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Ryan, Jeanne Gang & Zoe. 2012. Building/ Inside
Studio Gang Architects. Chicago: Studio Gang Architects.
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Thomas de Monchaux, Ian Volner. 2017. "Writers Theatre
Studio Gang Architects." The Journal of The American Institute of
Architects.
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