Project Orientation

The project questions abandoned and decaying architecture; and the roles that these buildings play in todays cities- and their effect on identity loss.

The former Victoria Theatre and its surrounds is very relevant to a discussion about these types of decaying buildings within the city. The approach for the selection of a 5th year project has begun with the choice of selecting a troubled brown field site, with history and with grit.

I propose to critique the way historic buildings are tampered with, in an attempt to make sense of the Victoria Theate site. I reject the following approaches;
1. The restoration of the theatre to its former glory/ The historic reproduction
2. I reject the ruins monumentalisation- I will not preserve the buildings fabric in its ruined condition
3. I reject the piece/ fragmentation approach of new and old part.
The project aims to create a new building out of the remains of the old. Critque of the traditional preservation of the facade over the true feeling and characteer of the space within.

The site extends beyond the theatre building to the old  unleased book shop next door and the underused theatre lane.... looking at extending this further....

precendents, Carlo Scarpa, David Chipperfeild, Gordan Matta-Clark


Still unsure as to what building program should develop here?
Thinking about social interaction- the difference between the newcastle the theatre was alive in- the social aspects... the ability for the theatreto take on a new cultural form...

-An exploration of the disjunction between expected form and expected use; by  oposing specific programs with particular conflicting spaces.
-This project addresses a forgotten landmark of major social significance.
-The idea of a hotel- which evokes a dynamic of occupants, violent and beautiful, inpersonal yet intimate an architecture of two-ness. Not unlike the programe for a hotel - absence follows intense presence follows absence again.
-The re-use of an urban artefact- the unveiling of urban memory.
-Examine the architecturally created illusion as a means of couteracting the negative effects of non-place. An architectural answer to the absence and displacement of culture.