Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA have completed the Theatre and Arts Centre De Kunstlinie project in Almere city, Netherland. With roughly 180,000 inhabitants, Almere is both a city of the arts and an artificial city.
Surrounded on three sides by the waters of an artificial lake, many different functions are lined up here: workshops for painters and sculptors, rehearsal spaces, sound studios – used partly by amateurs and partly by professionals – as well as three auditoriums in which stage performances, concerts and congresses take place. One striking feature is the tight layout of the spaces, some of which are directly accessible from the outside, others via patios and very short corridors.
The underlying idea of the architects was to create a building with similar spatial qualities throughout and without hierarchies – regardless whether one is concerned with auditoriums or circulation zones. Not surprisingly, therefore, there are corridors that end in a large glazed wall with a magnificent view over the water, just like one of the theatre spaces; and the auditoriums are laid out orthogonally just like the rooms where children can paint and draw.
Even the main entrance is unspectacularly integrated in the bold facade grid. Only at night, does the building attract attention to itself, when the large volumes of the theatre and the restaurant are illuminated and pedestrians walking along the embankment promenade have a view of the activities going on inside – wholly in the Dutch manner.
Photography by Iwan Baan
