Revitalize the Silent

Critic: Leonard Newcomb

My Degree Project is about reinventing the Masonic Temple as a Theater. The project begin with my personal encounter with the abandoned buildings. I remember it was four years ago when a group of friends and I explored our way into an abandoned office building. There we saw old pieces of furniture covered with layers of dust. Next to them were two lanes of miniature bowling alleys. The date written on the score board read, november 20th 1956. That event unfolded my fondness for abandoned buildings. The reason I chosen to work with Masonic Temple was because of its prominent architectural elements, its siting and its link to the Freemasons, the bits of secrecy.

The site is located across the street from the Rhode Island State House designed by Mckim Mead and White. The site suffered an overall isolation from its adjacent context. This is due to the interception by the two infrastructures(I-95 and railroad track), which act as a physical boundary that distant it from its neighboring communities. With this understanding in mind, a decision was finally made to program this landmark with theater functions. The goal is to generate reciprocity among the communities and to break the visual and the physical boundaries.

The theater I am proposing stems in two directions:

1. The notion of the Theatrical experience. This can be described as a passage of events; by using ramps that weaves in between the old shell and the new construct. It moves people in between two contrasting physical and visual conditions. 2. The development of the building itself as the stage to Providence.

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