An intelligent theatre machine for the art of the future
It will appear in the dark as a well lit and expressive monolith. The art scene's new shining star in the midst of an urban landscape of formal buildings and pulsing traffic sounds emanating from the new metro. The avant-garde theatre troupes, Hotel Proforma, and Troupe Kaleidoscope, plus the Danish Architecture Centre, and the Art Gallery Overgaden are the driving forces behind this new institution for the experimental arts. Knud Fladeland Nielsen is the architect and creator of this transparent and intelligent building, which actively engages the environment around it. Its transparent facade is capable of capturing signals and signs of life from its urban surroundings and from within the depths of it own walls, reflect light and images back into the urban scene.
Art and fluid boundaries
Art forms are melting together. The boundaries between drama, dance, film, music, architecture and installation art are crumbling. New forms of artistic expression are emerging. Advanced architecture and new technology can be a catalyst for this artistic process, when brought in as equal partners to solve the art scene's changing physical needs. The varying demands of modern drama and art, combined with the possibilities of new technologies, has given birth to this new and ultra flexible solution.
Permanent and flexible
Since 1985, Hotel Proforma has produced an array of unique performances in museums, town halls, theatres, and public institutions. As a continuing theme, many of these productions have been in active dialogue with their physical surroundings. Gradually, the need for a permanent yet flexible building for their experimental art has become clear. A building that can contain their unique blend of poetic and dramatic performances that typically unite blended art forms like installation and media art. These innovative ensembles will be able to use the building as a laboratory for the development of future artistic expression. The building is conceived as an open invitation for experimental artists. With advanced computer controlled stage technology, the building is constructed as a multifunctional and flexible theatre machine, that will offer the possibility for quick and frictionless changes in

the building's activities and offerings to the public. Dramatic performances can follow exhibitions and installations in the same day utilising mobile walls and floors.
Ambitious and subtle
The simple appearance of the outer shell simultaneously exposes and blurs the building's dramatic interior. This underscores Hotel Proforma's artistic signature which involves a wondrous and an unforeseeable poetry. The simplicity in the exterior architectural expression gives one's mind room and opportunity to unfold, free of individual associations.
Simple and provocative
The foyer is placed on top of the large central theatre and exhibition space. The public's arrival over the space is dramatically highlighted by the glass floor which offers views directly down onto the stage below. This a functional and unique contribution, placing the foyer on top of the stage, in that the public has to ascend to the top of the building's highest point in order to descend down to the stage area again. In the foyer, at the start of the performance, the public enters into mobile balconies, built into the outer walls which allows them to descend down to the scene below, contributing to a sort of weightlessness. This opens up possibilities for a whole new relationship between the artists and the public. The mobile balconies allow for new role relationships In dramatic interaction between the public and the actors on the stage. It opens up for new dramatic possibilities when the public and the actors confront each other and move amongst each other, blurring the lines between them. In this open and flexible theatre we come closer to the possibility for a new form of total theatre challenging the tyranny of the traditional frontal perspective in theatre performance.
Overture and identity
The project contains many ideas and visions for new relationships between artists, ensembles, and the public. The architecture of the building invites the challenging of new borders and the reinterpretation of future artistic expression. As a building, it is flexible and dynamic theatre machine that can be seen as an overture to the future identity of the theatre, its artists and the public.
© Jan Andersen 2002