Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer visited the Northern Lebanese city of Tripoli once in 1962, and designed a 10,000-hectare site, intended as an international fairground. Construction, however, was halted at the outset of Lebanon's civil war in 1975, and never resumed, leaving the Niemeyer’s architecture as a series of striking, ghostly symbols across Tripoli’s skyline, the skeleton architecture of The Dome has left us something to play with.

Among the highlights of the unfinished fairground, lays Niemeyer's Experimental Theatre, a huge dome with thick concrete walls rising at an extreme angle from the ground. Intended as a performance space, The Dome features a central stage powered by a hydraulic jet to adjust the height, as well as a stage behind the audience area to allow for a surrounding effect. Acoustics are built in: by way of its shape, the dome features a natural "whispering effect," whereby people standing on opposite ends of the structure can hear each other clearly at a whisper, and shouting produces reverberating echoes. Today, The Dome is endangered because no repairs or maintenance have been done to the structure.

Firas El Hallak produced a short video about The Dome, showing the space as well as how it is used in performance. The film features a dialogue between The Dome and the performers using the space.

Firas based the video on his project “The Dome Sessions”, which brings Lebanese and international artists to play experimental sets based on the acoustics of the space. Musicians, chosen for their ability and flexibility to experiment, perform within the walls of The Dome, fusing the local and the global, the traditional and the modern. The Dome Sessions are also filmed as a web-series of 10 episodes, each focusing on one act. Architectural cinematography leads the narrative, and enriches the recording with images of the concrete structure, while several cameras delicately encapsulate the whole experience, the emotional charge, and the intensity of the moment. The Dome’s architecture shapes the aesthetics of the filming, presenting imagery to the sonic experience: the incomplete dome-shaped structure creates an echo chamber, where sounds continue to float and reflect for seconds after their initial emission.

Learn more about The Dome Sessions.

PQ Performance Space Exhibition Curatorial Statement: Theatre Architecture and Architecture of spaces created specifically for the performing arts is no longer the effort of a single architect or a single country. International teams often create the most interesting work collaborating across the borders. We aim to create an inclusive exhibition showing a wide variety of work including spaces created even in hard to reach areas and places where performance spaces are temporary structures and are not designed by architects. Buildings and spaces that are brought to life by performance are complex organisms fusing together the very heartbeat of our humanity, theatre traditions and newest trends in architecture and technology. To keep a beating healthy heart inside these new spaces, the dialogue between performance art professionals, performance designers and architects is essential.

Theme: Transformation
Transformation is the core of the creative process. Process of surpassing individual personality realizing the power of shared awareness and the collective vision of a group. Inspiration through the best collaborative performance design and architecture, where experience and deep understanding play a major role in its successful realization. Focusing on in-depth explorations of the possibilities within the limitations of each task, where the limits determine new styles, engender new forms, and give impulse to new creations.

Curators: Andrew Todd and Markéta Fantová
All PQ2019 exhibitions and projects are curated, which means that participation is by selection through an open call application process.

Designers: Jan Kloss and Matěj Činčera (OKOLO)

Performance Space Exhibition Videographer: Firas El Hallak

A Competitive Exhibition
The Performance Space Exhibition is a competitive project. Curated for participation, it has prize categories.

Venue: Central Hall of the Industrial Palace

Performance Hours: Thursday 6 June 2019 until Sunday 16 June 2019

The Performance Space Exhibition showcases a wide range of possibilities for theatre architecture, from found and transformed spaces to major national projects to temporal outdoor structures, especially those in remote or complicated areas where the creators of the space might not be architects. Contemporary performances take place in many spaces outside of traditional theatres, and these can be just as exciting and valid as those in traditional multifunctional performing arts structures made exclusively by architectural firms.