Students of architecture are designing a new theater for Ljubljana

Students from five European countries will design a new theater building in the center of Ljubljana thanks to the project TACE - Theatre Architecture in Central Europe. This will take place as part of the workshop "Theater Architecture - Visions and Possibilities," the first part of which will be held from March 18 to 20, 2009, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The workshop will be attended by 62 architecture students from Bratislava, Brno, Budapest, Gdańsk, Gliwice, Liberec, Ljubljana, and Prague. Their task will be to develop a project for a modern "theater for the 21st century" during the summer semester.

The students aim to design a new theater building for the center of Ljubljana with a main hall intended for both traditional theater and contemporary forms of theater, with a capacity of approximately 500 spectators. Additional public spaces such as an exhibition hall or café are also intended to enrich the social life in the center of Ljubljana. The city center significantly lacks such a conceived building, which is one of the reasons why the City of Ljubljana has taken the patronage of the workshop and helped identify a suitable location.
During the first working meeting of the workshop in March, students will tour Ljubljana as well as the site for which they will design the theater, and will attend lectures on Ljubljana's architecture and urbanism (prof. Janez Koželj), the history of Ljubljana's theaters (Ivo Svetina), principles of designing theater buildings (prof. Vojteh Ravnikar), and stage space (prof. Meta Hočevar). The first working proposals and models will also be created, along with their presentation and discussion. Group work will be led by educators from each faculty.
Students will continue to engage with the assignment upon returning home as part of their semester work, and several will use it for their diploma project. At the beginning of June, three of the best projects from each faculty will be selected to be exhibited in Ljubljana in October 2009 as a side event of the symposium on experimental theater space, another event of the TACE project.
The patronage of the entire event has been taken by prominent Slovenian architect Vojteh Ravnikar. In addition to his studio at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Ljubljana, the workshop includes studios of Vladimír Soukenka at Czech Technical University in Prague, Jiří Suchomel from TU Liberec, and Jiří Knesl and Jakub Kynčl at VUT Brno. Also participating are the studios of Imre Vašek at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava and Elżbieta Ratajczyk-Piatkowska at Gdańsk Polytechnic, the Department of Urbanism at Silesian Polytechnic in Gliwice, and the Department of Design of Public Buildings at Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
The workshop "Theater Architecture - Visions and Possibilities" is part of the multi-year project TACE - Theatre Architecture in Central Europe supported by a grant from the European Union's Culture 2000 program. The project was prepared by the Arts Institute - Theater Institute, the project is implemented by the National Theatre in Prague, and its co-solvers are theater institutions from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The aim of the project is to thoroughly map Central European theater architecture, bringing its history and present closer through several events.

In 2009, the public will have access to the The Museum of Theater Architecture on the Internet - a database of theater architecture that will serve both those interested in theater architecture (historians, students, the general public) and visiting foreign theater professionals, providing them with information about the technical equipment of host theaters. Also in this year, in September 2009, there will be a conference on experimental theater space in Ljubljana, which will include, besides the presentation of the results of the workshop "Theater Architecture - Visions and Possibilities," the publication of the publication Experimental Theater Space in the Second Half of the 20th Century, which will gather contributions from the conference as well as more general reflections on the subject. The history of theater architecture in Central Europe will be addressed by both a large traveling exhibition opening in January 2010 in Prague, curated by architect Igor Kovačević, and an extensive publication in English. In addition to the workshop "Theater Architecture - Visions and Possibilities," there will also be a workshop dedicated to heritage protection and the reconstruction of theater buildings in the summer semester of 2010.

Updates regarding the TACE project and events in the field of theater architecture in Central Europe and worldwide can be found on the website www.theatre-architecture.eu.