Scenic design as a field for experimentation by architects: the set designs by Herzog & de Meuron and Morphosis

Abstract

Architecture and set designs have historically shared investigations into the concepts of space, time dimensions, illusion, and reality. This article analyses the scenography projects of architects recognized for the coherence of their conceptual investigation, in order to understand how the stage has enabled the realization of experiments that push their research work forward. Here we investigate the set designs by Herzog & De Meuron for ‘Tristan und Isolde’ (Berlin Opera House, 2006) and ‘Atilla’ (Metropolitan Opera House, 2010), and the set designs by Morphosis for ‘Silent Collisions’ (Venice Dance Biennale, 2003). By crossing over reflections on art, theatre and architecture, by Hal Foster, Rafael Moneo, Beth Weinstein, Chris Salter, Thea Brejzek and the architects themselves, this investigation seeks to base set design and architectural projects in the same conceptual field claimed by each of the architects. In the work of Herzog & De Meuron, the screen and the texture of materials potentiate the lighting designs, raising questions regarding volume and flatness, as well as theatricality and reality. The same questions are experienced on the one hand, in their Dominus Winery, and on the other, in the Ricola pavilion. For Thom Mayne (Morphosis), the sense of time may be stimulated with the light and the memory of pure geometry, when the transformation maintained the “cube” as a reference. They threw light on the same issues in the Cooper Union School (2006) and the Snow Show Pavilion (2004). The works studied reflect in these artistic fields the contemporary notions of uncertainty, virtual perception and time superpositions. They reveal how the nature of theatre has taken architecture and launched it into a study on illusion, space-time and movement or, according to Tschumi, the replacement of utilitas or function by the event.