ScenArchitecture
"One time set
design was architecture. Later it became imitation of architecture.
Later on it became imitation of artificial architecture.
Then lost its head, became mad, and from that moment lived in an asylum.
"
Gordon Craig, 1913
Two parallel lives
For centuries Architecture has been the art-science of "for
ever", while Set design was "temporary".
Looking to the past Architecture has played the role of Mother of
the Arts, explained through a larger universal language, because was
able to comprehend inside itself and between its space and dimensions, all
the other Arts.
At the same time, Stage design has represented, in the course of
history, the synthesis between theatre and actor, a
visual and physical connection that "housed" scenic action into its
core, containing it in
its flow through the construction of a "ephemeral" space
precisely because limited in time.
Three aspects of ScenArchitecture as a change in the form of time.
A - Architecture becomes" temporary".
Over recent years Set design is immersing architecture into its drama: mutant buildings, scenic machines at the scale of building, or impalpable, evanescent materials, created for a limited time existence: these realities are outlining a new course of the art-architecture relationship under the impetus of the image-era.
B - Set design becomes "for ever".
Continue passages from one discipline to the other, it has generated a new methodology which has transformed ideological concept of architectural language and typology into a referential identity, built on a visual contamination. The results of this process are "contaminated architectures” or “crystallized scenographies”, temporally immutable, that may also be understood as the result of design actions aimed to crystallize an image in its three-dimensional representation (real or virtual), in a form of building.
C - Set design invades the spaces of architecture.
Until now, the protagonist of set design has been the
"internal" space of the theatre, the area which could not be
fully represented in any other form, that could not be learned and lived
without a direct experience.
But since more than half a century the space of set design invades
the buildings, the town, its streets and squares, wherever the work
of man has limited the "empty" spaces, has created enclosed
spaces.
ScenArchitecture lives when the theater comes out the theatre buildings
to become "Architecture-theatre", "Urban-theatre";
in this case the Location, intended as a complex of space and social
relationships, may not be considered only a simple "container"
(Street theatre), nor reduced to subject/object of the scene (Location
theatre or "Teatro dei Luoghi"). The Location must become a
founding role, necessary other than unique, characterizing and bringing
life to the substance of a theatre text.
ScenArchitecture, in this sense, is defined as a series of design
actions to transform an architectural and/or urban space to
communicate a pre-existing content with which establish a dialectic
relationship.