Competition Entry for House of Arts and Culture Beirut by Danish JAJA Architects

Last Friday, Bustler posted the news of Italian architect Alberto Catalano of Teknoarch winning the international competition to design Lebanon’s new Arts and Culture House.

Here’s another competition proposal by Copenhagen-based firm JAJA Architects. The title of the concept is “Culture Bazaar”.

This is how JAJA describe the project:

The Culture Bazaar is a project that aims to dissolve the boundaries between interior and exterior. Resulting in a strong relation between house and city - creating a space for open exchange of art, culture and ideas.

Most cultural institutions are, traditionally, spatially introvert. The programs are isolated without external relation or influence - depriving them from potential synergy that combined would produce a greater experience.

Instead of isolating the activities, our ambition is to create an open Art and Culture House that can be an incubator for art and culture as well as urban life. A house that invites, and engages, artists, people and urban space to create a public domain for all.

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION
Inspired by vernacular architecture, we propose to organize the building’s Public Lobby (foyer, cafe and shops) around the central program – the large flexible performance hall – and unfold its full potential to dynamically affect the public lobby and surrounding urban space.

PERFORMANCE HALL
The performance hall is the heart of the building and is conceived as a highly flexible space. It has the capacity to engage the surrounding urban life and shift its character to accommodate any sort of activity – from concerts to poem recitals, conferences to plays or book conventions to movie showings. The limits are only within the user’s creative imagination.

On the ground floor the backstage/service areas are located in the back - towards the ring road – while the Public Lobby is facing the street on the other three sides.

The flexibility of the performance hall is made possible by organizing the entire performance hall and stage tower as one efficient “theater machine” where the stage is the floor while the other components - seating, light control, acoustic separation, and surface - benefits from a tailored flexibility. At a push of a button, tiers of seats and balconies will ascend to create seating arrangements for an auditorium, an arena or flat-floor. Three large entrances between the performance hall and public space can be opened, or closed, to create either a sound insulated black box or an entirely open connection - allowing activities to transcend into to the public lobby.

The facade is combination of form, structure, light and shadow that merges together to create unified identity.

PUBLIC LOBBY
The public lobby is the interface between the entire Art and Culture House and the surrounding urban realm. It is simultaneously an extension of the performance hall and the surrounding urban space. This effectively allows an expansion of the stage floor into the public lobby, and further, into the urban realm – or conversely, the urban realm into the lobby and further into the performance hall.

Alternating between lightly touching the ground and lifting the facade, the Culture Bazaar offers passer-bys views into the public lobby and further into the performance hall.

The idea of the public lobby is spatially similar to the traditional bazaar, it encourages interaction with its urban surroundings that mutually diversify each other to create an urban space that is influenced by the activities of the House.

The future Art and Culture House will become a place that invites, embraces and engages the surrounding urban spaces in its plays, concerts, poem recitals, exhibitions, events, conferences, debates, dances…. It will become a cultural market place facilitating the interaction between city, artists and public making it an integral part of the urban life.

Images: JAJA Architects