The theatre is part of a wider project to create fitting premises for a TV station on the site of a dilapidated former car suspension factory. Initial plans to demolish and build new proved vastly beyond budget. Instead, the architects developed an exemplary scheme of adaptive reuse and extension. The theatre’s mesmerising details form a whole that "performs" continuously. All materials are natural. Bricks are reused from ruins of houses burned during the Kosovo war. The ceiling is an 80-centimetre-deep bush of irregularly placed sticks, and more sticks are woven into a metallic structure for balcony and stairs. These and the mosaic back wall, moulded from different-sized wooden planks, are effective acoustic diffusers. Elements of the old factory are either employed in their original functions or given new ones, such as pipes combined into vertical radiators. Lighting fixtures express the architect’s motivational thoughts converted into Morse code: dots and dashes.
Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture
