Fountain Square Revealed, Indianapolis, IN

A Theatrical Performance of Revealing and Hiding Spaces

Until the late 1900s, the Fountain Square District populated the Indianapolis area with thriving commercial businesses. Many of the commercial businesses and recreational activities have left the district, leaving much of the Fountain Square vacant. In hopes to reclaim its glory, Fountain Square currently serves as home to many local artist, from painters. to singers, to small appeal businesses like PUP (People for Urban Progress).  With the original theatre still in despair, the proposed theatre, Revealed, intends to bring the platform back to Fountain Square, allowing the local artist to showcase their talents. Revealed’s setting is very intimate which helps to encourage performer and audience relationships, close connections, and personable interactions.

Taking the research and designs from the surface studies, Revealed becomes a theatrical performance of revealing and hiding spaces by manipulating the ETFE material, form, and program. The building’s envelope consist of Patterned ETFE Pillows which expands and contract based on indoor and outdoor temperatures. The pillow technology enhanced with a pattern strategically dictates how much light or transparency emits into a spaces as the pillows expand and compress. These patterned pillows are places throughout the roof of the building to correspond with the pedestrian circulation, access points, and views that surface of the roof covered. From theses design decisions, theatre programming manipulated the roof from just a lateral surface to a vertical curtain wall where the envelope touches the ground and undulates up creating a view of theatrical performance. To enhance the transparency and opaqueness of the building’s envelope, more structural grid lines along with clusters of  tree columns layered the form in areas where programming needed to be hidden or somewhat visible. .   

As the envelop shows transparent and opaque materiality, the program mimics the form in terms of the positioning of seen and unseen programming. The required program servicing the Fountain Square community divides itself into three categories similar to the range of opacity, one that is 100% visible, another 50% visible 50% hidden, and the other 100% hidden 0% visible. The platform/stage where the artist performs at the expenses of the pedestrian, vehicular traffic, and the inside user,  consist of the visible programming. The visible program positioned itself at the corner of Woodlawn and Virginia St to gain the most interaction with pedestrians and vehicular traffic taking place at the intersection, especially since Virginia is a busy street.  I believed the view of this central point would entice pedestrians and vehicular traffic to want to interact with the performer and the users of the space, if they seen this exciting theatrical performance taking place as they scroll or drive past the site. Spaces that act as meet and greet places for users to interact with each other while waiting for a show performed on the stage or in the blackbox theater consist of the visible/hidden program. Most of these intermediate transparent spaces are located at the entry points of the site, for easy access and quick service for the everyday user. Those servicing spaces, such as kitchens, restrooms, dressing room, offices, that users both inside and outside are unwelcome to use or use on an as needed basis, are tucked away behind other programmed spaces and tightly dense patterned ETFE Pillows on the walls and roof of the building. The blackbox theatre is also found in the category and location of hidden programming, due to its theatre typology.