All the city's a stage : a cultural center for Boston

Abstract

This thesis looks at the exuberance of city life as manifest in performance. Whether spontaneous or formal, gatherings for entertainment, celebration. spectacle and observation occur throughout the city at a variety of scales. A city's vitality comes largely from its great concentration of humanity. When people come together, an expressive energy usually arises as creativity, ideas. passions. and talents are shared. Interactions which we can call performance or theatre, in many circumstances, are then taking place. Thus. the city becomes transformed into a stage whose actors are its people. While the role of the architect in this process may be somewhat peripheral, an understanding of the spaces and forms which somehow tend to foster or allow public performance interactions in the city can be very useful in the design of public spaces which demand vitality. and. of course, in the design of theatres. The thesis begins with an historical overview of theatre form, which very generally outlines the development of performance, its historical context and its typical settings. The second chapter takes a look at a number of places throughout Boston which have been designed for, or adapted to becoming venues for performance. The third chapter. in a series of detailed case studies ranging from a sacred palace to the shopping mall takes a closer look at the theatre as a microcosm of the larger world in which it exists. and of which it is intended to symbolize. Finally. a design for a prime site in Boston is proposed which incorporates both informal and formal performance experiences. The underlying design intention has been to produce a cultural center which provides a scaffolding or framework for performance at a variety of levels for a variety of people. Form studies and diagrams analyze this intention in the context of the proposed design.