This labyrinthian theatre set of slatted and solid timber is designed to create an environment for two strangers to act out an improvised performance (+ slideshow).
TAAT (Theatre as Architecture Architecture as Theatre), founded by Belgian architect Breg Horemans and Dutch theatre-maker Gert-Jan Stam, designed the wooden structure named HALL03 as a sequence of 19 connected spaces.
For each performance, two volunteer participants create a "do-it-yourself theatre play" by clambering through the set and interacting without speaking. By observing each other's movements, the intention is that the actors also become part of the audience.
Visitors can watch parts of the action unfold from outside, through slats made from planed pine batons that facilitate views into and out of the spaces.
Other moments are obscured by the birch boards that are used to create solid partitions, ceilings and floors. Bright lighting shines through the slatted panels casting long dark shadows across the timber-lined spaces.
"We work with a theatre form called DIY theatre, that puts the spectator and participant central in the theatrical experience," explained Horemans. "We use architecture as a tool to create powerful 'here and now' experiences in which we try to tickle a higher sense of spatial awareness with our participants."
The voluntary actors must pick a route through the space, negotiating short flights of timber stairs, sliding doors and passageways. Trapdoors lead to elevated platforms and gaps in the structure provide peep-holes that allow participants to spy on or interact with each other.
Treating each social interaction and change in space as a scene in an unscripted and choreographed play "you are spectator and performer at the same time," Horemans told Dezeen.
"Together with an unknown stranger you discover a series of spaces, in which your relation to the space and with the other is in constant negotiation," he added.
The structure is designed to be disassembled and remade into a variety of different spaces to fit new locations, acting as a travelling theatre kit.
TAAT collaborated with architecture and industrial design students at the technical institute VTI Kortrijk on the design and installation of the work.
Hall03 is the third of a series of 32 sub-projects under the umbrella of a long-term project called HALL33, which TAAT describes as "a building that is a theatre play and a theatre play that is a building."
HALL03 was originally produced for Biënnale Interieur 2014, in Kortrijk, Belgium.
