1 minute read
ARCT3030 Construction
ARCT3030 Construction Unit Coordinator: Andrea Quagliola Teaching Staff: Andrea Quagliola and Mark Jecks
FYNN TURLEY
Designed by Lacaton & Vassal, the Polyvalent Theatre is a multi-purpose hall that seamlessly integrates itself into its context. The project’s characteristic façade allows for public access to the roof as its ‘sloped’ appearance gives the impression of a hill upheld by a light steel frame structure and its permeability, achieved with glazing, polycarbonate, and inflated film cushions, serves to quite literally reflect the surrounding environment and to orchestrate interesting interior lighting conditions.
The chosen structural bay illustrates how air-filled ETFE film cushions create a lightweight network of convex surfaces, providing sunlight to a suspended greenhouse with its own automated systems of ventilation, watering, and shade mechanisms. Part of the ceiling follows the same structural technique, which reinforces this sense of permeability to its surroundings, even both interior and exterior transparent panelling is operable to maximise the interplay between outside and in.
The transparency and lightness of the project aligns with its flexibility as a function space; as though the building itself adapts to the needs of its users through automation and operability, resulting in an architecture that can be commanded by its users.
Image: Lacaton & Vassal, Polyvalent Theatre section analysis.
