Tenerife Centre of Dramatic Arts | gpy arquitectos

This Centre of the Dramatic Arts presents itself to the city as a platform, as an urban stage with the city and landscape as backdrop. The interior roofed patio, generated by a three-dimensional folding of the wooden surface of the roof, is conceived as a scenic box that opens up towards the city and affirms itself as the building's spatial reference point, a place for relationships and interchange. Defined as an inclined surface, the patio functions at the same time as an open-air auditorium and as the backbone for the pedestrian routes throughout the building, comprising a system of ramps that relate the different scenic spaces of the building via an oblique zigzag geometry. The whole building can be transformed into a space for performances, a public, open theatre, with the audience watching from the ramps, the platforms, the landings, transformed into both actors and spectators at the same time. In this Centre for Performing Arts, action determines the space of representation. We look for local materials, a low technical complexity of the project and also low maintenance costs. In the case of concrete, the structural elements function at the same time as the finishings. We also consider light as a building material - the light that fills the interior empty spaces. The fundamental quality of the elements delimiting the spaces is their transparency or reflectivity - in other words, their behaviour in the presence of light. With respect to the Centre of Dramatic Arts, the whole space is conceived as a wooden construction in the tradition of the wooden scenic backdrops in a theatre. On the concrete elements, the wood is no longer physically present. However, it can still be seen in the marks it has left on their surface. Structure: Reinforced Concrete + Steel Girders (Roof) Cladding: - IPE vertical wood panelling - Dolly Varden Siding, integrating a system of folding shutters - aluminium frame glazing - HPL (high pressure laminate) panels Floors: - concrete with non-slip etched + float finish (common + circulation spaces) - pinewood (roof terrace), birch sports parquet (rehearsal rooms), - Prodema wood composite panels (performance space) Internal walls: - reinforced concrete - plasterboard walls - acoustic wood panelling Metalwork (Handrails – balustrades – doorways): - galvanized steel tubular profiles and metal mesh